Anticipatory behavior: Exploiting knowledge about the future to improve current behavior

Abstract

This chapter is meant to give a concise introduction to the topic of this book. The study of anticipatory behavior is referring to behavior that is dependent on predictions, expectations, or beliefs about future states. Hereby, behavior includes actual decision making, internal decision making, internal preparatory mechanisms, as well as learning. Despite several recent theoretical approaches on this topic, until now it remains unclear in which situations anticipatory behavior is useful or even mandatory to achieve competent behavior in adaptive learning systems. This book provides a collection of articles that investigate these questions. We provide an overview for all articles relating them to each other and highlighting their significance to anticipatory behavior research in general.