Acting to discover

We do not simply receive information: we choose where to look, what to listen to, and when to ask a question. We study how people decide what to find out next, how these choices shape learning, and when gaining information is worth the time and effort it takes. When learning an unfamiliar rhythm, for example, a listener might replay a difficult passage or slow it down to hear how its parts fit together. We ask how people identify what they do not yet understand and select observations that could resolve that uncertainty.

This direction builds on active perception, which treats sensing as a process of choosing how to gather evidence (Bajcsy, 1988), and research on information selection, which asks what makes a question or observation useful (Nelson, 2005). These approaches guide our investigation of how the value of information depends on a learner’s goals and current knowledge. We also ask when to keep sampling and when there is enough evidence to act.