Memory shapes time perception and intertemporal choices

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that temporal distortions and intertemporal choice behaviors can be explained by the coding efficiency of sensorimotor representations, linking perception, memory constraints, and decision-making through information theory.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model combining information theory and AI to explain how memory and coding efficiency influence time perception and intertemporal choices.

Findings

Temporal distortions relate to sensorimotor coding efficiency.

Memory constraints lead to different discounting behaviors.

Exponential and hyperbolic discounting emerge from probabilistic models.

Abstract

There is a consensus that human and non-human subjects experience temporal distortions in many stages of their perceptual and decision-making systems. Similarly, intertemporal choice research has shown that decision-makers undervalue future outcomes relative to immediate ones. Here we combine techniques from information theory and artificial intelligence to show how both temporal distortions and intertemporal choice preferences can be explained as a consequence of the coding efficiency of sensorimotor representation. In particular, the model implies that interactions that constrain future behavior are perceived as being both longer in duration and more valuable. Furthermore, using simulations of artificial agents, we investigate how memory constraints enforce a renormalization of the perceived timescales. Our results show that qualitatively different discount functions, such as exponential and hyperbolic discounting, arise as a consequence of an agent's probabilistic model of the world.