Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We investigate the cognitive micro-foundations of individual search. The aim of this study is to identify important cog-nitive antecedents of the heterogeneity of individual level search behavior. We introduce a problem-solving task that notonly requires a binary trade-off between either exploration or exploitation, but solicits the individual to understand theunderlying problem structure in order to be able to optimize the search. Combining data collected from individuals solv-ing this experimental task (N = 407) with a quantitative survey of cognitive styles as well as a neuropsychological testof cognitive ability (g-factor) we explain how different cognitive micro-foundations translate into substantial variation insearch behaviors.