ArticleCell reports2023
Interactive cognitive maps support flexible behavior under threat.
Article in Cell reports, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- Transdiagnostic mental health symptom dimensions predict use of flexible model-based inference in complex environments.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- The interoceptive origin of reinforcement learning.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Review
- Feature identification learning both shapes and is shaped by spatial object-similarity representations.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Emotions and individual differences shape human foraging under threat.Nature. Mental health · 2025Article
- Playful brains: a possible neurobiological pathway to cognitive health in aging.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Social threat avoidance depends on action-outcome predictability.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Naturalistic reinforcement learning.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In social environments, survival can depend upon inferring and adapting to other agents' goal-directed behavior. However, it remains unclear how humans achieve this, despite the fact that many decisions must account for complex, dynamic agents acting according to their own goals. Here, we use a predator-prey task (total n = 510) to demonstrate that humans exploit an interactive cognitive map of the social environment to infer other agents' preferences and simulate their future behavior, providing for flexible, generalizable responses. A model-based inverse reinforcement learning model explained participants' inferences about threatening agents' preferences, with participants using this inferred knowledge to enact generalizable, model-based behavioral responses. Using tree-search planning models, we then found that behavior was best explained by a planning algorithm that incorporated simulations of the threat's goal-directed behavior. Our results indicate that humans use a cognitive map to determine other agents' preferences, facilitating generalized predictions of their behavior and effective responses.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.