Have a personal or library account? Click to login
The Complex Card Matching Task (CCMT): A PsychoPy-Based Task for Studying the Exploration-Exploitation Trade-Off Cover

The Complex Card Matching Task (CCMT): A PsychoPy-Based Task for Studying the Exploration-Exploitation Trade-Off

Open Access
|Feb 2026

References

  1. Cohen JD, MCure, SM, Yu AJ. Should I stay or should I go? How the human brain manages the trade-off between exploitation and exploration. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2007;362(1481):933942. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2007.2098
  2. Aston-Jones G, Cohen JD. An integrative theory of locus coeruleus-norepinephrine function: adaptive gain and optimal performance. Annual Review of Neuroscience. 2005;28:403450. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.neuro.28.061604.135709
  3. Alnæs D, Sneve MH, Espeseth T, Endestad T, van de Pavert SHP, Laeng B. Pupil size signals mental effort deployed during multiple object tracking and predicts brain activity in the dorsal attention network and the locus coeruleus. Journal of Vision. 2014;14(4):1. DOI: 10.1167/14.4.1
  4. Murphy PR, OCnnell RG, OSllivan M, Robertson IH, Balsters JH. Pupil diameter covaries with BL activity in human locus coeruleus. Human Brain Mapping. 2014;35(8): 41404154. DOI: 10.1002/hbm.22466
  5. Jepma M, Nieuwenhuis S. Pupil diameter predicts changes in the exploration–exploitation trade-off: Evidence for the adaptive gain theory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 2011;23(7):15871596. DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2010.21548
  6. Gilzenrat MS, Nieuwenhuis S, Jepma M, Cohen JD. Pupil diameter tracks changes in control state predicted by the adaptive gain theory of locus coeruleus function. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. 2010;10(2):252262. DOI: 10.3758/CABN.10.2.252
  7. Hayes TR, Petrov AA. Pupil diameter tracks the exploration–exploitation trade-off during analogical reasoning and explains individual differences in fluid intelligence. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 2016;28(2):308318. DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_00895
  8. Berg EA. A simple objective technique for measuring flexibility in thinking. The Journal of General Psychology. 1948;39(1):1522. DOI: 10.1080/00221309.1948.9918159
  9. Peirce J, Gray JR, Simpson S, MacAskill M, Höchenberger R, Sogo H, Lindeløv JK. PsychoPy2: Experiments in behavior made easy. Behavior Research Methods. 2019;51:195203. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-018-01193-y
  10. Del Sordo GC, Papesh, M. Exploration vs. exploitation in a novel complex card matching task: Evidence from pupillometry. In press at Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. 2025. DOI: 10.3758/s13415-025-01377-y
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/jors.549 | Journal eISSN: 2049-9647
Language: English
Submitted on: Dec 20, 2024
|
Accepted on: Dec 22, 2025
|
Published on: Feb 9, 2026
Published by: Ubiquity Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2026 Del Sordo Giovanna C., Tardivo Fabio, Papesh Megan H., published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.