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Abstract

This dissertation examined whether people engage in information search adaptively and what processes contribute to this potential achievement. The four papers report experiments based on sample-based decisions featuring either financial information costs, or temporal information costs implemented in a speed-accuracy trade-off. The findings paint a mixed picture of adaptivity, which I assume to consist of at least two aspects: responding to the decision situation and changes therein through an a-priori planning process, and further improving efficiency through a fine-tuning process based on experience. Participants consistently adapted to explicit changes in the decision situation in a suitable way, mainly in the financial-cost experiment, but also in the temporal-information experiments. However, when it came to further improving efficiency beyond this initial adaptation, participants showed profound difficulties, which were demonstrated in a persistent accuracy bias in the speed-accuracy trade- off experiments and a lack of improvement in the information-cost experiments. Metacognitive monitoring and control are presumably fundamental to making this experience-based improvement possible, but participants could not make use of the assistance provided to metacognitive monitoring in either paradigm. This leads to the conclusion that further improving efficiency to achieve adaptivity is not a straightforward matter. What the exact requirements are and where they are instantiated in the real world to make adaptivity possible are important questions for future research.