Teaching with Rewards and Punishments: Reinforcement or Communication?

Mark K. Ho, Michael L. Littman, Fiery Cushman, Joseph L. Austerweil

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

Teaching with evaluative feedback involves expectations about how a learner will interpret rewards and punishments. We formalize two hypotheses of how a teacher implicitly expects a learner to interpret feedback - a reward-maximizing model based on standard reinforcement learning and an action-feedback model based on research on communicative intent - and describe a virtual animal-training task that distinguishes the two. The results of two experiments in which people gave learners feedback for isolated actions (Exp. 1) or while learning over time (Exp. 2) support the action-feedback model over the reward-maximizing model.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2015
EditorsDavid C. Noelle, Rick Dale, Anne Warlaumont, Jeff Yoshimi, Teenie Matlock, Carolyn D. Jennings, Paul P. Maglio
Pages920-925
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196722
StatePublished - 2015
Event37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Mind, Technology, and Society, CogSci 2015 - Pasadena, United States
Duration: 23 Jul 201525 Jul 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2015

Conference

Conference37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Mind, Technology, and Society, CogSci 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPasadena
Period23/07/1525/07/15

Keywords

  • communication
  • evaluative feedback
  • feedback
  • pedagogy
  • punishment
  • reinforcement learning
  • reward

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