scholarly journals Opposite effects of choice history and stimulus history resolve a paradox of sequential choice bias

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ella Bosch ◽  
Matthias Fritsche ◽  
Benedikt V. Ehinger ◽  
Floris P de Lange
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Bias Current ◽  
High Confidence ◽  
Previous Evidence ◽  
Strength Of Evidence ◽  
Decision Confidence ◽  
Evidence Strength ◽  
Subjective Confidence ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Choice Bias

ABSTRACTPerceptual decisions are biased towards previous decisions. Previous research suggests that this choice repetition bias is increased after previous decisions of high confidence, as inferred from response time measures (Urai et al., 2017), but also when previous decisions were based on weak sensory evidence (Akaishi et al., 2014). As weak sensory evidence is typically associated with low confidence, these previous findings appear conflicting. To resolve this conflict, we set out to investigate the effect of decision confidence on choice repetition more directly by measuring explicit confidence ratings in a motion coherence discrimination task. Moreover, we explored how choice and stimulus history jointly affect subsequent perceptual choices. We found that participants were more likely to repeat previous choices of high subjective confidence, as well as previous fast choices, confirming the boost of choice repetition with decision confidence. Furthermore, we discovered that current choices were biased away from the previous evidence direction, not previous choice, and that this effect grew with previous evidence strength. These findings point towards simultaneous biases of choice repetition, modulated by decision confidence, and adaptation, modulated by the strength of evidence, which bias current perceptual decisions in opposite directions.

scholarly journals Superior Colliculus Neuronal Ensemble Activity Signals Optimal Rather Than Subjective Confidence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Odegaard ◽  
Piercesare Grimaldi ◽  
Seong Hah Cho ◽  
Megan A.K. Peters ◽  
Hakwan Lau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Superior Colliculus ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Decision Accuracy ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Decision Confidence ◽  
Brain Signals ◽  
Subjective Confidence ◽  
The Brain

AbstractRecent studies suggest that neurons in sensorimotor circuits involved in perceptual decision-making also play a role in decision confidence. In these studies, confidence is often considered to be an optimal readout of the probability that a decision is correct. However, the information leading to decision accuracy and the report of confidence often co-varied, leaving open the possibility that there are actually two dissociable signal types in the brain: signals that correlate with decision accuracy (optimal confidence) and signals that correlate with subjects’ behavioral reports of confidence (subjective confidence). We recorded neuronal activity from a sensorimotor decision area, the superior colliculus (SC) of monkeys, while they performed two different tasks. In our first task, decision accuracy and confidence co-varied, as in previous studies. In our second task, we implemented a novel motion discrimination task with stimuli that were matched for decision accuracy but produced different levels of confidence as reflected by behavioral reports. We used a multivariate decoder to predict monkeys’ choices from neuronal population activity. As in previous studies on perceptual decision-making mechanisms, we found that neuronal decoding performance increased as decision accuracy increased. However, when decision accuracy was matched, performance of the decoder was similar between high and low subjective confidence conditions. These results show that the SC likely signals optimal decision confidence similar to previously reported cortical mechanisms, but is unlikely to play a critical role in subjective confidence. The results also motivate future investigations to determine where in the brain signals related to subjective confidence reside.Significance StatementConfidence is thought to reflect the rational or optimal belief concerning one’s choice accuracy. Here, we introduce a novel version of the dot-motion discrimination task with stimulus conditions that produce similar accuracy but different subjective behavioral reports of confidence. We decoded decision performance of this task from neuronal signals in the superior colliculus (SC), a subcortical region involved in decision-making. We found that SC activity signaled a perceptual decision for visual stimuli, with the strength of this activity reflecting decision accuracy, but not the subjective level of confidence as reflected by behavioral reports. These results demonstrate an important role for the SC in perceptual decision-making and challenge current ideas about how to measure subjective confidence in monkeys and humans.

scholarly journals Decoupling sensory from decisional choice biases in perceptual decision making

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Linares ◽  
David Aguilar-Lleyda ◽  
Joan López-Moliner
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Theory Model ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Response Mapping ◽  
Task Instructions ◽  
Detection Theory Model ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Choice Bias

ABSTRACTThe contribution of sensory and decisional processes to perceptual decision making is still unclear, even in simple perceptual tasks. When decision makers need to select an action from a set of balanced alternatives, any tendency to choose one alternative more often— choice bias—is consistent with a bias in the sensory evidence, but also with a preference to select that alternative independently of the sensory evidence. To decouple sensory from decisional biases, here we asked humans to perform a simple perceptual discrimination task with two symmetric alternatives under two different task instructions. The instructions varied the response mapping between perception and the category of the alternatives. We found that from 32 participants, 30 exhibited sensory biases and 15 decisional biases. The decisional biases were consistent with a criterion change in a simple signal detection theory model. Perceptual decision making, thus, even in simple scenarios, is affected by sensory and decisional choice biases.IMPACT STATEMENTPerceptual decision making, even in simple scenarios, is affected by sensory and decisional choice biases.

scholarly journals Effects of expected task difficulty on metacognitive confidence and multitasking

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxine Tamara Sherman ◽  
Anil Seth
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Secondary Task ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Prior Probability ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Perceptual Discrimination ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Decision Confidence

In daily life, repeated experiences with a task (e.g. driving) will generally result in the development of a belief about one’s ability (“I am a good driver”). Here we ask how such beliefs, termed self-efficacy, interact with metacognitive confidence judgements. Across three pre-registered experiments, participants performed a perceptual discrimination task and reported their decision confidence. We induced contextual beliefs about performance (our operationalisation of self-efficacy) by manipulating the prior probability of an easy or hard trial occurring in each block. In Experiment 1 easy and hard trials generated the same levels of performance (a “subjective difficulty” manipulation), whereas in Experiments 2 and 3 performance differed across difficulty conditions (an “objective difficulty” manipulation). Results showed that context (self-efficacy) and difficulty interacted multiplicatively, consistent with the notion that confidence judgements combine decision evidence with a prior (contextual) belief on being correct. This occurred despite context having no corresponding effect on performance. We reasoned that performing tasks in easy contexts may reduce cognitive “load”, and tested this, in Experiment 3, by instructing participants to perform two tasks concurrently. Consistent with a reduction in load, the effects of context transferred from influencing confidence on our primary task to improving performance on the secondary task. Taken together, these studies reveal that contextual beliefs about performance facilitate multitasking, potentially by reducing the load of tasks believed to be easy, and they extend psychophysical investigations of perceptual decision-making by incorporating ‘higher-order’ beliefs about difficulty context, corresponding to intuitive notions of self-efficacy.

scholarly journals Using confidence inferred from pupil-size to dissect perceptual task-strategy: support for a bounded decision-formation process

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katsuhisa Kawaguchi ◽  
Stephane Clery ◽  
Paria Pourriahi ◽  
Lenka Seillier ◽  
Ralf Haefner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pupil Size ◽  
Neuronal Response ◽  
Perceptual Task ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Decision Confidence ◽  
Attractor Dynamics ◽  
Task Strategy ◽  
Decision Area ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Account Due

During perceptual decisions subjects often rely more strongly on early rather than late sensory evidence even in tasks when both are equally informative about the correct decision. This early psychophysical weighting has been explained by an integration-to-bound decision process, in which the stimulus is ignored after the accumulated evidence reaches a certain bound, or confidence level. Here, we derive predictions about how the average temporal weighting of the evidence depends on a subject’s decision-confidence in this model. To test these predictions empirically, we devised a method to infer decision-confidence from pupil size in monkeys performing a disparity discrimination task. Our animals’ data confirmed the integration-to-bound predictions, with different internal decision-bounds accounting for differences between animals. However, the data could not be explained by two alternative accounts for early psychophysical weighting: attractor dynamics either within the decision area or due to feedback to sensory areas, or a feedforward account due to neuronal response adaptation. This approach also opens the door to using confidence more broadly when studying the neural basis of decision-making.

scholarly journals Flexible use of confidence to guide advice requests

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nomi Carlebach ◽  
Nick Yeung
Keyword(s):  
Final Decision ◽  
Monitoring Tool ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
High Confidence ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Subjective Confidence ◽  
Perceptual Judgement

A growing body of evidence indicates that subjective confidence plays an important role in guiding behaviour. Past studies have demonstrated a fixed relationship between confidence and behaviour, so that low confidence leads to one course of action, and high confidence to another. Here, we tested whether people display flexibility in their use of confidence, so that the mapping between confidence and behaviour is not necessarily fixed, but can instead vary depending on the specific context. This proposal was studied in three experiments, testing the hypothesis that the seemingly natural relationship between low confidence and advice requests varies according to whether people know, or do not know, the quality of the advice. Participants made an initial perceptual judgement, and then had to choose between re-sampling evidence or receiving advice from a virtual advisor, before making a final decision. The results from these experiments showed that, when no objective information about advisor reliability was available, people selected advice more often when their confidence was high rather than low, reflecting the use of confidence as a feedback proxy to learn about advisor quality. Importantly, participants were able to learn about the value of advice even in the absence of feedback and subsequently selected more advice from better advisors, indicating the value of using confidence in this way. In contrast, when participants had prior knowledge about the reliability of advisors, they requested advice more often when confidence was low, reflecting the use of confidence as a self-monitoring tool signalling that help should be solicited. These findings indicate that people use confidence in a way that is context-dependent and directed towards achieving their current goals.

scholarly journals Changes-of-mind in the absence of new post-decision evidence

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadim A. A. Atiya ◽  
Arkady Zgonnikov ◽  
Martin Schoemann ◽  
Stefan Scherbaum ◽  
Denis O’Hora ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Neural Circuit ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Neural Population ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Decision Uncertainty ◽  
Motion Discrimination ◽  
Initial Decision ◽  
Sensory Evidence

AbstractDecisions are occasionally accompanied by changes-of-mind. While considered a hallmark of cognitive flexibility, the mechanisms underlying changes-of-mind remain elusive. Previous studies on perceptual decision making have focused on changes-of-mind that are primarily driven by the accumulation of additional noisy sensory evidence after the initial decision. In a motion discrimination task, we demonstrate that changes-of-mind can occur even in the absence of additional evidence after the initial decision. Unlike previous studies of changes-of-mind, the majority of changes-of-mind in our experiment occurred in trials with prolonged initial response times. This suggests a distinct mechanism underlying such changes. Using a neural circuit model of decision uncertainty and change-of-mind behaviour, we demonstrate that this phenomenon is associated with top-down signals mediated by an uncertainty-monitoring neural population. Such a mechanism is consistent with recent neurophysiological evidence showing a link between changes-of-mind and elevated top-down neural activity. Our model explains the long response times associated with changes-of-mind through high decision uncertainty levels in such trials, and accounts for the observed motor response trajectories. Overall, our work provides a computational framework that explains changes-of-mind in the absence of new post-decision evidence.Authors SummaryWe used limited availability of sensory evidence during a standard motion discrimination task, and demonstrated that changes-of-mind could occur long after sensory information was no longer available. Unlike previous studies, our experiment further indicated that changes-of-mind were strongly linked to slow response time. We used a reduced version of a previously developed neural computational model of decision uncertainty and change-of-mind to account for these experimental observations. Importantly, our model showed that the replication of these experimental results required a strong link between change-of-mind and high decision uncertainty (i.e. low decision confidence), supporting the notion that change-of-mind are related to decision uncertainty or confidence.

scholarly journals Dynamic expressions of confidence within an evidence accumulation framework

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kobe Desender ◽  
Tobias H. Donner ◽  
Tom Verguts
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Temporal Evolution ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Decision Confidence ◽  
Confidence Judgments ◽  
Evidence Strength ◽  
Dot Motion ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Random Dot Motion

AbstractHuman observers can reliably report their confidence in the choices they make. An influential framework conceptualizes decision confidence as the probability of a decision being correct, given the choice made and the evidence on which it was based. This framework accounts for three diagnostic signatures of human confidence reports, including an opposite dependence of confidence on evidence strength for correct and error trials. However, the framework does not account for the temporal evolution of these signatures, because it only describes the transformation of a static representation of evidence into choice and the associated confidence. Here, we combine this framework with another influential framework: dynamic accumulation of evidence over time, and build on the notion that confidence reflects the probability of being correct, given the choice and accumulated evidence up until that point. Critically, we show that such a dynamic model predicts that the diagnostic signatures of confidence depend on time; most critically, it predicts a stronger opposite dependence of confidence on evidence strength and choice correctness as a function of time. We tested, and confirmed, these predictions in human behaviour during random dot motion discrimination, in which confidence judgments were queried at different points in time. We conclude that human confidence reports reflect the dynamics of the probability of being correct given the accumulated evidence and choice.

Event-related prosody reveals distinct acoustic manifestations of accuracy and confidence in speech

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Goupil ◽  
Jean-Julien Aucouturier
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Metacognitive Awareness ◽  
Verbal Reports ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Psychophysical Procedure ◽  
Speech Prosody ◽  
Subjective Confidence ◽  
Sensory Evidence

Speech prosody constitutes a fundamental way through which speakers communicate their levels of confidence. Yet, it remains unknown whether prosodic markers of uncertainty constitute mere indices, that are constitutively present when speakers feel doubtful, or rather, whether they reflect other underlying psychological variables. By combining a psychophysical procedure with an acoustic analysis of verbal reports, we tease apart the contributions of sensory evidence, accuracy, and subjective confidence to epistemic prosody. We find that loudness, duration and intonation reflect distinct underlying mental processes: while loudness is predominantly impacted by accuracy, duration and intonation truly reflect subjective confidence, over and beyond sensory evidence and accuracy. We also find that speakers’ accuracy can still be heard beyond their own metacognitive awareness, and that at the level of intonation, speakers who display better metacognitive sensitivity are also the best signalers. Our results highlight prosody as a fundamental interface through which confidence can be shared.

scholarly journals Predictions shape confidence in right inferior frontal gyrus

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxine T. Sherman ◽  
Anil K. Seth ◽  
Ryota Kanai
Keyword(s):  
Orbitofrontal Cortex ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Matter Density ◽  
Fmri Data ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Decision Confidence ◽  
Subjective Confidence

AbstractIt is clear that prior expectations shape perceptual decision-making, yet their contribution to the construction of subjective decision confidence remains largely unexplored. We recorded fMRI data while participants made perceptual decisions and confidence judgements, controlling for potential confounds of attention. Results show that subjective confidence increases as perceptual prior expectations increasingly support the decision, and that this relationship is associated with BOLD activity in right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG). Specifically, rIFG is sensitive to the discrepancy between expectation and decision (mismatch), and, crucially, higher mismatch responses are associated with lower decision confidence. Connectivity analyses revealed the source of the expectancy information to be bilateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the source of sensory signals to be intracalcarine sulcus. Altogether, our results indicate that predictive information is integrated into subjective confidence in rIFG, and reveal an occipital-frontal network that constructs confidence from top-down and bottom-up signals. This interpretation was further supported by exploratory findings that the white matter density of intracalcarine sulcus and OFC negatively predicted their respective contributions to the construction of confidence. Our findings advance our understanding of the neural basis of subjective perceptual processes by revealing an occipito-frontal functional network that integrates prior beliefs into the construction of confidence.

scholarly journals Revealing subthreshold motor contributions to perceptual confidence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thibault Gajdos ◽  
Stephen M. Fleming ◽  
Marta Saez Garcia ◽  
Gabriel Weindel ◽  
Karen Davranche
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Emg Activity ◽  
Perceptual Discrimination ◽  
Motor Activation ◽  
Perceptual Judgments ◽  
Trial Analysis ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Perceptual Confidence ◽  
Perception Action

AbstractEstablished models of perceptual metacognition, the ability to evaluate our perceptual judgments, posit that perceptual confidence depends on the strength or quality of feedforward sensory evidence. However, alternative theoretical accounts suggest the entire perception-action cycle, and not only variation in sensory evidence, is monitored when evaluating confidence in one’s percepts. Such models lead to the counterintuitive prediction that perceptual confidence should be directly modulated by features of motor output. To evaluate this proposal here we recorded electromyographic (EMG) activity of motor effectors while subjects performed a near-threshold perceptual discrimination task and reported their confidence in each response. A subset of trials exhibited sub-threshold EMG activity in response effectors before a decision was made. Strikingly, trial-by-trial analysis showed that confidence, but not accuracy, was significantly higher on trials with subthreshold motor activation. These findings support a hypothesis that preparatory motor activity impacts upon confidence over and above performance, consistent with models in which perceptual metacognition integrates information across the perception-action cycle.

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