Foraging as an evidence accumulation process

Jacob D. Davidson · Ahmed El Hady

94 citations0/0 files storedPLoS Computational Biology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies

Abstract

The patch-leaving problem is a canonical foraging task, in which a forager must decide to leave a current resource in search for another. Theoretical work has derived optimal strategies for when to leave a patch, and experiments have tested for conditions where animals do or do not follow an optimal strategy. Nevertheless, models of patch-leaving decisions do not consider the imperfect and noisy sampling process through which an animal gathers information, and how this process is constrained by neurobiological mechanisms. In this theoretical study, we formulate an evidence accumulation model of patch-leaving decisions where the animal averages over noisy measurements to estimate the state of the current patch and the overall environment. We solve the model for conditions where foraging decisions are optimal and equivalent to the marginal value theorem, and perform simulations to analyze deviations from optimal when these conditions are not met. By adjusting the drift rate and decision threshold, the model can represent different "strategies", for example an incremental, decremental, or counting strategy. These strategies yield identical decisions in the limiting case but differ in how patch residence times adapt when the foraging environment is uncertain. To describe sub-optimal decisions, we introduce an energy-dependent marginal utility function that predicts longer than optimal patch residence times when food is plentiful. Our model provides a quantitative connection between ecological models of foraging behavior and evidence accumulation models of decision making. Moreover, it provides a theoretical framework for potential experiments which seek to identify neural circuits underlying patch-leaving decisions.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 94 citations exist upstream.

References

1955A BEHAVIORAL MODEL OF RATIONAL CHOICE 1993Decision field theory: A dynamic-cognitive approach to decision making in an uncertain environment.2017Neuroscience Needs Behavior: Correcting a Reductionist Bias 2002Models of ecological rationality: The recognition heuristic.2012Ecological RationalityIntelligence in the World 1960Models for Choice-Reaction Time 2015Shared decision-making drives collective movement in wild baboons 2014Toward a Science of Computational Ethology

Cited by

2019Rats exhibit similar biases in foraging and intertemporal choice tasks 2026Utilizing social foraging as a framework to study decisions in groups 2025Explore-exploit behavior in humans as a sequential sampling process 2023Information gathering explains decision dynamics during human and monkey reward foraging 2022Biased Learning as a Simple Adaptive Foraging Mechanism 2021Time to leave: Computations of when to end a social interaction depend on opportunity costs, depression, and loneliness

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.