iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

If you care about how AI is reshaping work and reshaping truth, come to our conference in DC this Saturday! We have an incredible line-up, from science fiction to hardcore Econ.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

If you have the feeling that everyone across both aisles feels similarly about AI, you may not be wrong. Check out this national survey we ran about attitudes towards AI!

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Excited to have this out and featured!

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

This is incredible work!! I didn’t contribute any science but I did contribute some music and art💃🏻🎨. Intrigued as to what that means?? Read it!!

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

If you've made it this far, thank you! 🙏 Thoughts and comments appreciated.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

The general model we present could also help understand differences in motivation across individuals (e.g., need for cognition) and clinical conditions (e.g., depression). Why are some people more willing to try to learn than others?

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

– as such they are not solely optimization constraints, but rather should fit inside the optimization as well! Here's an account of this idea w/ @smusslick onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

It tells us that theories of mental effort must take into account not just dynamics of the environment but dynamics of the agent. And more specifically, the bidirectional relationship that exists between control and the agent's own state (knowledge, proficiency, etc).

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

So why is this cool? It shows that people modulate their cognitive control based on their learning expectations, and this can happen at a pretty fast timescale (minutes here), and also just beyond awareness (previous pilots found participants weren't sure they had learned!)

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

More precise regression analyses found that all three predicted relationships by the model were present in the data: skill level, learning rate and their interaction all predicted participant deliberation in the predicted directions.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

We asked whether their willingness to deliberate could be predicted by their levels of improvement before. Initial fits to average behavior indicated that subjects who learned more were more willing to deliberate longer in a subsequent similar task.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

Participants first engaged in a learning experience during which we measured their improvement. Participants then engaged in a very similar task during which we measured their willingness to deliberate (proxy for control), even though the task was unsolvable (not known to them).

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

We designed a 2 block dot motion experiment to test these theoretical predictions.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

The model predicted that as opposed to a greedy model (current reward rate maximization, standard normative objective), a forward looking model would assign control based on skill level, learning rate and their interaction.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

(The model is essentially a concatenation of two previous models I've worked on with colleagues. The Expected Value of Control for Learning [EVCL] model: escholarship.org/content/qt7w... And the Learning Drift Diffusion Model [LDDM]: elifesciences.org/articles/649...)

escholarship.org

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

The model had a control component (with some objective, e.g. maximize total cumulative reward), a processing component (to make decisions, e.g. a DDM), and a learning component.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

We incorporated these ideas into a model of control allocation grounded in perceptual learning in order to test its predictions empirically.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

Current theories account for future discounted reward, but they tend to assume proficiency is a stable quantity, not one that is actually dynamically shaped by our mental effort choices. And if this is the case, then learning expectations should in turn affect those choices.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

We advance that there is no paradox (at least in the case of learning), and this is why:

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

So much so that an "effort paradox" was identified several years ago to try to reconcile situations where people exerted mental effort when it didn't seem to make sense based on our current theories. sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

media.tenor.com

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

And yet this special type of intertemporal choice (where costs and benefits are spread over time) is not readily solvable with current cognitive control theories because it requires engaging in an activity that is both less immediately rewarding and cognitively more effortful.

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

The choice to invest in learning something or engage in familiar activities surrounds us like water surrounds fish. Should I make pasta or learn a new recipe? Should I continue hunting and pecking or learn to type properly? Should I stay in my job or learn new skills?

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Javier Masís @jmasis.bsky.social · 22/08/2024

I'm delighted to share a new preprint alongside @musslick.bsky.social and Jon D. Cohen titled "Learning expectations shape cognitive control allocation." How does the expectation to learn or improve at a task affect an agent's willingness to exert mental effort? doi.org/10.31234/osf...

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Javier Masís

Fred Callaway @fredcallaway.bsky.social · 26/09/2023

Hello bluesky! For my first act, I'd like to shamelessly self-promote my paper on metacognitive control of memory recall, just published in Psych Review. psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

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