{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pbio.3002987","title":"Cost-benefit tradeoff mediates the transition from rule-based to memory-based processing during practice","abstract":"Practice not only improves task performance but also changes task execution from rule- to memory-based processing by incorporating experiences from practice. However, how and when this change occurs is unclear. We test the hypothesis that strategy transitions in task learning can result from decision-making guided by cost-benefit analysis. Participants learn 2 task sequences and are then queried about the task type at a cued sequence and position. Behavioral improvement with practice can be accounted for by a computational model implementing cost-benefit analysis and the model-predicted strategy transition points align with the observed behavioral slowing. Model comparisons using behavioral data show that strategy transitions are better explained by a cost-benefit analysis across alternative strategies rather than solely on memory strength. Model-guided fMRI findings suggest that the brain encodes a decision variable reflecting the cost-benefit analysis and that different strategy representations are double-dissociated. Further analyses reveal that strategy transitions are associated with activation patterns in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and increased pattern separation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Together, these findings support cost-benefit analysis as a mechanism of practice-induced strategy shift.","journal":"PLoS Biology","year":2025,"id":542868,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.961,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":585796,"name":"Jiefeng Jiang","orcid":"0000-0002-4264-6382","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1432331,"name":"Guochun Yang","orcid":"0000-0002-0516-8772","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":46,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:53:00.171379Z","pmid":"39847600","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}