Figure 5.

Losses of the subjects compared with the optimal movement planner: experiment 1. Left, Average gain losses (in points) of subjects compared with the optimal movement planner. Middle, Losses attributable to subjects' choosing the wrong game. To compute this measure, we computed the difference between the optimal gain and the gain subjects would have gotten if they chose the games they chose, but within the chosen game got the best possible outcome (no losses because of inaccuracy). Right, Losses attributable to deviations of aim points in the game the subject chose in a majority of trials from the optimal aim point in that game. Error bars indicate the ±1 SEM; curves are exponential functions fitted to the data. As expected, losses decreased over sessions as subjects learned the jump distributions. A comparison of the middle and right panels shows that subjects lost more points because they aimed at the wrong local maximum than because their aim points deviated from the maximum.