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{
    "pk": 25527,
    "title": "Think again?\nThe amount of mental simulation tracks uncertainty in the outcome",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "In this paper, we investigate how people use mental simulations:\ndo people vary the number of simulations that they run\nin order to optimally balance speed and accuracy? We combined\na model of noisy physical simulation with a decision\nmaking strategy called the sequential probability ratio test, or\nSPRT (Wald, 1947). Our model predicted that people should\nuse more samples when it is harder to make an accurate prediction\ndue to higher simulation uncertainty. We tested this\nthrough a task in which people had to judge whether a ball\nbouncing in a box would go through a hole or not. We varied\nthe uncertainty across trials by changing the size of the\nholes and the margin by which the ball went through or missed\nthe hole. Both people’s judgments and response times were\nwell-predicted by our model, demonstrating that people have a\nsystematic strategy to allocate resources for mental simulation",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "mental simulation; intuitive physics; SPRT; computational\nmodeling"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Papers",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5px8949q",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Jessica",
            "middle_name": "B",
            "last_name": "Hamrick",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "UCB",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Kevin",
            "middle_name": "A",
            "last_name": "Smith",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "UCSD",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Thomas",
            "middle_name": "L",
            "last_name": "Griffiths",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "UCB",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Edward",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Vul",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "UCSD",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2015-01-01T18:00:00Z",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25527/galley/15151/download/"
        }
    ]
}