One example is the successor representation (Dayan, 1993). Further, there are suggestions that there are multiple model-based controllers, i.e., a mixture model (Doya et al., 2002), in which the selection between them can have model-based or potentially model-free components. Finally, there is a rich panoply of other formulations of the dichotomies between model-free and model-based control and of model-based control itself (Dayan, 2009, Kahneman, 2011 and Stanovich and selleck chemicals llc West, 2002). We have already seen some variants, with the issue of instruction versus experience (as in Wunderlich et al., 2012a) but

there are many others too, including declarative versus procedural, spatial/geometric versus abstract, interpreted versus compiled, prior- versus data-bound (Dayan, 2009), and even episodic versus semantic control (Lengyel and Dayan, 2008). Teasing these various aspects apart, and understanding what properties and substrates they share, is critical. this website For example, iterations of reflective control as captured by ideas such as model based, declarative, and goal directed are almost certainly not fully commensurable. So far, we have concentrated on instrumental control, i.e., the choice of actions based on their past or current

contingencies. Another, even more influential source of control is Pavlovian, in which predictions of future valenced outcomes lead automatically to a choice of action (such as approach for appetitive outcomes and inhibition next or withdrawal for aversive ones) irrespective of the benefit of that action (Dayan et al., 2006 and Williams and Williams, 1969). One way to conceive of these Pavlovian systems is in terms of an evolutionarily specified

prior, serving to facilitate performance by alleviating the computational costs that come with instrumental conditioning’s increased flexibility in being able to learn to emit arbitrary actions. There is good evidence for Pavlovian predictions of actual outcomes, which what we argue underpins instrumental model-based control, and this seems to account for behavioral phenomena such as specific forms of Pavlovian instrumental transfer (PIT) (Ostlund and Maidment, 2012 and Kruse et al., 1983). However, there are two key additional aspects to Pavlovian conditioning. First is the idea that Pavlovian control might influence instrumental model-based calculations. For instance, we noted above that building and evaluating the tree might be considered in terms of a set of internal actions (Dayan, 2012). Those actions might also be susceptible to Pavlovian biases.