Schedule of Events | Search Abstracts | Invited Symposia | Symposia | Poster Sessions | Data Blitz

Sketchpad Series 

The impact of conceptual novelty on digital information foraging

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Steven Martinez¹ (), Chelsea Helion¹, Jason Chein¹, Vishnu Murty²; ¹Temple University, ²University of Oregon

Traditional reward foraging frameworks examine how people gather information and decide between known options with a depleting reward value (i.e., exploit) and unfamiliar options with an unknown reward value (i.e., explore). However, gathering information often occurs in the absence of extrinsic reward, such as when scrolling online. When scrolling, value signals may be guided by novelty, wherein variability in new content may influence whether people stay on a given online platform (exploit) or switch to a new platform (explore). Here, we tested whether variation in conceptual novelty (i.e., the semantic uniqueness of information) influenced explore/exploit decisions. Forty-nine participants (Mean age = 29.1) watched video feeds consisting of twelve trial-unique videos. Low novelty feeds consisted of videos drawn from the same category (i.e., 12 different videos of the same TikTok dance), while high novelty feeds contained multiple videos drawn from four different categories. On each trial, participants made decisions to either exploit the current video feed or exit the current video feed and explore a new video feed. Decisions to explore a new video feed incurred a time delay cost. Results showed that individuals watched more videos (p = .002) and made fewer explore decisions (p = .003) in high versus low novelty feeds, consistent with exploitation. Moreover, survival analyses showed that high novelty feeds were associated with a significantly decreased risk of explore decisions by 31.3% (HR = .69, p = .007). These findings suggest that conceptual novelty can meaningfully influence explore/exploit decisions, specifically by promoting exploitation.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic