{"pk":27880,"title":"Efficiency of learning vs. processing: Towards a normative theory of multitasking","subtitle":null,"abstract":"A striking limitation of human cognition is our inability to ex-ecute some tasks simultaneously. Recent work suggests thatsuch limitations can arise from a fundamental trade-off in net-work architectures that is driven by the sharing of representa-tions between tasks: sharing promotes quicker learning, at theexpense of interference while multitasking. From this perspec-tive, multitasking failures might reflect a preference for learn-ing efficiency over parallel processing capability. We explorethis hypothesis by formulating an ideal Bayesian agent thatmaximizes expected reward by learning either shared or sep-arate representations for a task set. We investigate the agent’sbehavior and show that over a large space of parameters theagent sacrifices long-run optimality (higher multitasking ca-pacity) for short-term reward (faster learning). Furthermore,we construct a general mathematical framework in which ratio-nal choices between learning speed and processing efficiencycan be examined for a variety of different task environments.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Multitasking"},{"word":"cognitive control"},{"word":"Bayesian inference"},{"word":"capacity constraints"}],"section":"Publication-based-Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8501s6t8","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Yotam","middle_name":"","last_name":"Sagiv","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton","department":""},{"first_name":"Sebastian","middle_name":"","last_name":"Musslick","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton","department":""},{"first_name":"Yael","middle_name":"","last_name":"Niv","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton","department":""},{"first_name":"Jonathan","middle_name":"D","last_name":"Cohen","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2018-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27880/galley/17518/download/"}]}