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dc.contributor.advisorLaura E. Schulz.en_US
dc.contributor.authorJara-Ettinger, Jose Julianen_US
dc.contributor.otherMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.en_US
dc.date.accessioned2017-01-12T18:33:18Z
dc.date.available2017-01-12T18:33:18Z
dc.date.copyright2016en_US
dc.date.issued2016en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106433
dc.descriptionThesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2016.en_US
dc.descriptionCataloged from PDF version of thesis.en_US
dc.descriptionIncludes bibliographical references (pages 131-143).en_US
dc.description.abstractBy kindergarten, our knowledge of agents has unfolded into a powerful intuitive theory that enables us to thrive in our social world. In this thesis I propose that children build their commonsense psychology around a basic assumption that agents choose goals and actions by quantifying, comparing, and maximizing utilities. This naive utility calculus generalizes infants' expectation that agents navigate efficiently, and captures much of the rich social reasoning we engage in from early childhood. I explore this theory in a series of experiments looking at children's ability to infer costs and rewards given partial information, their reasoning about knowledgeable versus ignorant agents, and their reasoning about the moral status of agents. Moreover, a formal model of this theory, embedded in a Bayesian framework, predicts with quantitative accuracy how humans make cost and reward attributions.en_US
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityby Jose Julian Jara-Ettinger.en_US
dc.format.extent143 pagesen_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherMassachusetts Institute of Technologyen_US
dc.rightsM.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.en_US
dc.rights.urihttp://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582en_US
dc.subjectBrain and Cognitive Sciences.en_US
dc.titleThe inner life of goals : costs, rewards, and commonsense psychologyen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.description.degreePh. D.en_US
dc.contributor.departmentMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
dc.identifier.oclc967336542en_US


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