Adaptation to recent outcomes attenuates the lasting effect of initial experience on risky decisions

Abstract

Both primarily and recently encountered information have been shown to influence experience-based risky decision making. The primacy effect predicts that initial experience will influence later choices even if outcome probabilities change and reward is ultimately more or less sparse than primarily experienced. However, it has not been investigated whether extended initial experience would induce a more profound primacy effect upon risky choices than brief experience. Therefore, the present study tested in two experiments whether young adults adjusted their risk-taking behavior in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task after an unsignaled and unexpected change point. The change point separated early “good luck” or “bad luck” trials from subsequent ones. While mostly positive (more reward) or mostly negative (no reward) events characterized the early trials, subsequent trials were unbiased. In Experiment 1, the change point occurred after one-sixth or one-third of the trials (brief vs. extended experience) without intermittence, whereas in Experiment 2, it occurred between separate task phases. In Experiment 1, if negative events characterized the early trials, after the change point, risk-taking behavior increased as compared with the early trials. Conversely, if positive events characterized the early trials, risk-taking behavior decreased after the change point. Although the adjustment of risk-taking behavior occurred due to integrating recent experiences, the impact of initial experience was simultaneously observed. The length of initial experience did not reliably influence the adjustment of behavior. In Experiment 2, participants became more prone to take risks as the task progressed, indicating that the impact of initial experience could be overcome. Altogether, we suggest that initial beliefs about outcome probabilities can be updated by recent experiences to adapt to the continuously changing decision environment.

Deterministic and probabilistic regularities underlying risky choices are acquired in a changing decision context

“…Importantly, the present study unveiled sensitivity even without signaling any characteristic of the underlying probabilities, at least when these followed a repeating pattern. This is in line with those studies that manipulated the early balloons in an unsignaled manner and found the adjustment of risk taking later in the task 30 – 32 .…”

“…Some of the earlier studies using experimental manipulations investigated how initial experience with lucky (bursts after several pumps) or unlucky (bursts after a few pumps) series of balloons changed risk-taking behavior later in the task when burst probabilities became unbiased 30 – 32 . According to the results, individuals smoothly adjusted their risk-taking behavior to the changed probabilities.…”

Deterministic and probabilistic regularities underlying risky choices are acquired in a changing decision context

“…Importantly, the present study unveiled sensitivity even without signaling any characteristic of the underlying probabilities, at least when these followed a repeating pattern. This is in line with those studies that manipulated the early balloons in an unsignaled manner and found the adjustment of risk taking later in the task [30][31][32] .…”

“…Moreover, current computational models have become increasingly successful in capturing the learning aspect of task performance 28,29 . However, with experimental methods, it has scarcely been investigated how the direct manipulation of outcome probabilities alters the learning process and thereby risk-taking behavior in the BART [30][31][32][33][34] . These efforts are summarized next.…”

“…These efforts are summarized next. Some of the earlier studies using experimental manipulations investigated how initial experience with lucky (bursts after several pumps) or unlucky (bursts after a few pumps) series of balloons changed risk-taking behavior later in the task when burst probabilities became unbiased [30][31][32] . According to the results, individuals smoothly adjusted their risk-taking behavior to the changed probabilities.…”