Learning, Generalization and the Perception of Information: an Experimental Study

Marco Novarese, Alessandro Lanteri and Cesare Tibaldeschi

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This article experimentally explores the way in which human agents learn how to process and manage new information. In an abstract setting, players should perform an everyday task: selecting information, making generalizations, distinguishing contexts. The tendency to generalize is common to all participants, but in a different way. Best players have a stringer tendency to generalise rules. A high score is, in fact, associated with low entropy for mistakes, that is with a tendency to repeat the same mistakes over and over. Though the repetition of mistakes might be considered a failure to properly employ feedback or a bias, it may instead turn out as a viable and successful procedure. This result is connected to the literature on learning.

Keywords: behavioural entropy; cognitive economics; complexity; experiments; feedback; heuristics; learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 C91 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-neu
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:28007

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