ArticleNature communications2026
Competing cognitive pressures on human exploration in the absence of trade-off with exploitation.
Article in Nature communications, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Competing cognitive pressures on human exploration in the absence of trade-off with exploitation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Fluctuations in Sequential Many-Alternative Decisions Reveal Strategies Beyond Immediate Reward Maximisation.Journal of cognition · 2025Article
- Performance errors during rodent learning reflect a dynamic choice strategy.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
- Intrinsic motivation for choice varies with individual risk attitudes and the controllability of the environment.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Exploration heuristics decrease during youth.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Exploring novel environments through sequential sampling is essential for efficient decision-making under uncertainty. In the laboratory, human exploration has been studied in situations where it is traded against reward maximisation. By design, these 'explore-exploit' dilemmas confound the behavioural characteristics of exploration with those of the trade-off itself. Here, we propose a sequential sampling task where exploration can be compared in the presence and absence of trade-off with exploitation. Detailed model-based analyses of choices reveal specific exploration patterns arising when information seeking is not traded against reward seeking or influenced by prospective value. Human choices are directed toward the most uncertain option available, but only after an initial sampling phase consisting of repeated choices from each novel option. These findings outline competing cognitive pressures on information seeking: the repeated sampling of the current option (local uncertainty minimisation), and the directed sampling of the most uncertain option available (global uncertainty minimisation).
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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.