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Credo for optimality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2019

Alan A. Stocker*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA 19104. [email protected]://www.sas.upenn.edu/~astocker

Abstract

Optimal or suboptimal, Rahnev & Denison (R&D) rightly argue that this ill-defined distinction is not useful when comparing models of perceptual decision making. However, what they miss is how valuable the focus on optimality has been in deriving these models in the first place. Rather than prematurely abandon the optimality assumption, we should refine this successful normative hypothesis with additional constraints that capture specific limitations of (sensory) information processing in the brain.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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