Understanding patch foraging strategies across development

Lloyd, Alex; Viding, Essi; McKay, Ryan; Furl, Nicholas · 2023 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2023.07.004

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Summary

This review paper investigates the developmental trajectory of patch foraging strategies, specifically the shift from exploratory behaviors in adolescence to exploitative strategies in adulthood. The authors address the research gap regarding how neurocognitive development influences these decision-making processes, proposing that the heightened exploration seen in youth reflects evolutionary adaptations for learning environmental structures. This perspective integrates findings on behavioral changes across development with neural correlates of foraging, suggesting that the transition from exploration to exploitation is driven by maturation in reward processing, learning, and cognitive control. The paper also highlights the clinical relevance of these strategies, noting that biases in explore/exploit choices may serve as markers for mental health disorders, which often emerge during adolescence. The authors utilize a theoretical framework grounded in the Marginal Value Theorem (MVT) and reinforcement learning (RL) models to define patch foraging as a sequential decision-making problem involving an explore/exploit trade-off. They review existing literature on human and non-human animal behavior, focusing on paradigms such as patch foraging tasks and n-armed bandit tasks. The analysis centers on the "cooling off" theory, which posits that exploration becomes less stochastic from childhood to adulthood. This process is modeled using RL parameters, particularly stochasticity, which quantifies the degree to which individuals deviate from selecting the option with the highest expected value. The review synthesizes evidence showing that adolescents exhibit higher stochasticity, allowing them to sample options more randomly to learn reward structures, whereas adults converge on more deterministic, exploitative strategies. Key findings indicate that exploration declines significantly from childhood to adulthood across various species and task types. Contrary to the assumption that adults are always more efficient, the review notes that adolescents often produce more optimal foraging behavior according to MVT, while adults tend to overexploit patches. Adolescents’ exploratory tendencies allow them to adapt faster to new environments and perform better in volatile conditions where reward contingencies change. The authors attribute these age-related differences to neurocognitive developments, specifically the maturation of systems governing reward-based decision-making and cognitive control. The "cooling off" process is described as a mechanism where early stochastic exploration facilitates the acquisition of environmental knowledge, enabling effective exploitation in maturity. The significance of this work lies in its integration of evolutionary theory, computational modeling, and developmental psychology. By framing adolescent exploration as an adaptive strategy for learning rather than a deficit, the paper reinterprets behaviors such as novelty-seeking and reduced uncertainty aversion. Furthermore, the authors argue that deviations from typical developmental trajectories in explore/exploit choices may indicate underlying psychopathology. This suggests that foraging strategies could serve as informative biomarkers for mental health issues and potential targets for clinical intervention. The review calls for future research to further disentangle the specific neurocomputational mechanisms driving these transitions and to explore how biases in foraging strategies relate to the development of mental health problems across the lifespan.

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