Note. The model of sequential decision making with dependencies that is presented in Alfonso and Gonzalo’s 2011 PLOS Comp. Bio. paper seems to be a source of confusion for many of us in lab. In particular assumed that this model was one where our focal individual’s behavior \(b_{k}\) depends explicitly on the behaviors of all preceding individuals \(\{b_1, ... , b_{k-1} \}\). Here I attempt to unpack the model in smaller pieces and to explicitly work through an example.
For the entirety of this note we are going to assume we only have a two choice decision and that \(Y\) is the correct option and \(X\) is the incorrect option.