Individual differences in learning ability.

A. Individual-level learning curves. We identified 22 subjects who performed all 64 subtasks in Experiment 1, and computed their subtask-averaged learning curves. Each gray curve corresponds to the learning curve for a different individual subject (smoothed using state-space estimation from [38]). In humans, a range of overall learning performance is seen: some subjects consistently outperformed others (e.g. Subject M, highest accuracy over all trials and subtasks), while others consistently underperformed (e.g. Subject L, lowest average accuracy). In magenta are subtask-averaged learning curves corresponding to individual model simulations from the highest-performing model tested in this study (encoding stage=ResNet152/avgpool, plasticity rule=square). B. Some individual humans outperform all models. Five out of 22 subjects had significantly higher overall performance than the highest performing model we tested (one-tailed Welch’s t-test, Bonferroni corrected, p<0.05).