{"pk":49214,"title":"Trade-Offs Between Tasks Induced by Capacity Constraints Bound the Scope of Intelligence","subtitle":null,"abstract":"A core challenge in cognitive science is understanding the barriers to intelligence and the circumstances that favor cognitive specialization. General intelligence requires a cognitive architecture that is successful across tasks. However, improving an architecture for a given task is often observed to hinder performance on others. Although trade-offs between tasks are a recurring element of explanations in cognitive science, they have received little direct theoretical attention. We present a formal framework that provides a principled understanding of when trade-offs emerge. In particular, we build on recent advances in applying rate-distortion theory to reinforcement learning. This allows us to formalize the representational capacity an agent can call upon in approaching tasks in terms of information. We find trade-offs occur when components of a task conflict in ways that cannot be easily coarse-grained by the agent's encoding scheme. Further, cognition may be general, specialized, or implement a coverall strategy, depending on conditions.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Artificial Intelligence; Biology; Computer Science; Psychology; Animal cognition; Cognitive architectures; Evolution; Representation; Computational Modeling"}],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7hf5p1ht","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Cameron","middle_name":"Rouse","last_name":"Turner","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""},{"first_name":"Dilip","middle_name":"","last_name":"Arumugam","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""},{"first_name":"Logan","middle_name":"Richard","last_name":"Nelson","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""},{"first_name":"Tom","middle_name":"","last_name":"Griffiths","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49214/galley/37175/download/"},{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49214/galley/38720/download/"}]}