The framework of cognitively bounded rationality treats problem solving as fundamentally rational, but emphasises that it is constrained by cognitive architecture and the task environment. This paper investigates a simple decision making heuristic, Take The Best (TTB), within that framework. We formulate TTB as a likelihood-based probabilistic model, where the decision strategy arises by probabilistic inference based on the training data and the model constraints. The strengths of the probabilistic formulation, in addition to providing a bounded rational account of the learning of the heuristic, include natural extensibility with additional cognitively plausible constraints and prior information, and the possibility to embed the heuristic as a subpart of a larger probabilistic model. We extend the model to learn cue discrimination thresholds for continuous-valued cues and experiment with using the model to account for biased preference feedback from a boundedly rational agent in a simulated interactive machine learning task.

Simple lexicographic decision heuristics that consider cues one at a time in a particular order and stop searching for cues as soon as a decision can be made have been shown to be both accurate and frugal in their use of information. But much of the simplicity and success of these heuristics comes from using an appropriate cue order. For instance, the Take The Best heuristic uses validity order for cues, which requires considerable computation, potentially undermining the computational advantages of the simple decision mechanism. But many cue orders can achieve good decision performance, and studies of sequential search for data records have proposed a number of simple ordering rules that may be of use in constructing appropriate decision cue orders as well. Here we consider a range of simple cue ordering mechanisms, including tallying, swapping, and move-to-front rules, and show that they can find cue orders that lead to reasonable accuracy and considerable frugality when used with lexicographic decision heuristics.

Simple lexicographic decision heuristics that consider cues one at a time in a particular order and stop searching for cues as soon as a decision can be made have been shown to be both accurate and frugal in their use of information. But much of the simplicity and success of these heuristics comes from using an appropriate cue order. For instance, the Take The Best heuristic uses validity order for cues, which requires considerable computation, potentially undermining the computational advantages of the simple decision mechanism. But many cue orders can achieve good decision performance, and studies of sequential search for data records have proposed a number of simple ordering rules that may be of use in constructing appropriate decision cue orders as well. Here we consider a range of simple cue ordering mechanisms, including tallying, swapping, and move-to-front rules, and show that they can find cue orders that lead to reasonable accuracy and considerable frugality when used with lexicographic decision heuristics.

Simple lexicographic decision heuristics that consider cues one at a time in a particular order and stop searching for cues as soon as a decision can be made have been shown to be both accurate and frugal in their use of information. But much of the simplicity and success of these heuristics comes from using an appropriate cue order. For instance, the Take The Best heuristic uses validity order for cues, which requires considerable computation, potentially undermining the computational advantages of the simple decision mechanism. But many cue orders can achieve good decision performance, and studies of sequential search for data records have proposed a number of simple ordering rules that may be of use in constructing appropriate decision cue orders as well. Here we consider a range of simple cue ordering mechanisms, including tallying, swapping, and move-to-front rules, and show that they can find cue orders that lead to reasonable accuracy and considerable frugality when used with lexicographic decision heuristics.