Choices change the temporal weighting of decision evidence

Abstract

Many decisions result from the accumulation of decision-relevant information (evidence) over time. Even when maximizing decision accuracy requires weighting all the evidence equally, decision-makers often give stronger weight to evidence occurring early or late in the evidence stream. Here, we show changes in such temporal biases within participants as a function of intermittent judgments about parts of the evidence stream. Human participants performed a decision task that required a continuous estimation of the mean evidence at the end of the stream. The evidence was either perceptual (noisy random dot motion) or symbolic (variable sequences of numbers). Participants also reported a categorical judgment of the preceding evidence half-way through the stream in one condition, or executed an evidence-independent motor response in another condition. The relative impact of early versus late evidence on the final estimation flipped between these two conditions. In particular, participants' sensitivity to late evidence after the intermittent judgment, but not the simple motor response, was decreased. Both the intermittent response as well as the final estimation reports were accompanied by non-luminance mediated increases of pupil diameter. These pupil dilations were bigger during intermittent judgments than simple motor responses and bigger during estimation when the late evidence was consistent than inconsistent with the initial judgment. In sum, decisions activate pupil-linked arousal systems and alter the temporal weighting of decision evidence. Our results are consistent with the idea that categorical choices in the face of uncertainty induce a change in the state of the neural circuits underlying decision-making.

Movement characteristics impact decision-making and vice versa

“…Therefore, it was our third prediction that decisions should rely more on earlier information as compared to information presented shortly before movement onset. This is conceptually similar to findings showing that committing to a decision reduces sensitivity towards subsequent information (Bronfman et al, 2015; Talluri et al, 2021), however preparation of movement itself should reflect such gradual commitment. As a final fourth prediction, such primacy effect with which novel information is integrated into decisions should be strongest when high motor control is required, such as when performing fast as compared to slow tapping (Jäncke, Peters, et al, 1998; Jäncke, Specht, et al, 1998; Lutz et al, 2004).…”

A confirmation bias in perceptual decision-making due to hierarchical approximate inference

“…In other words, these models usually integrate log odds , which we kept approximately constant between LSHC and HSLC conditions. The same argument applies to other models that do no distinguish between sensory and category information, whether based on mixing trials of different difficulty [ 21 ] or differential accumulation of consistent and inconsistent evidence [ 63 , 64 , 69 , 70 ].…”

Dynamic Weighting of Time-Varying Visual and Auditory Evidence During Multisensory Decision Making

“…It has been demonstrated that different evidence integration strategies can be explained by specific differences in behavioural paradigms. Among important features that influence weighting profiles are the division of evidence during a trial (Bronfman et al, 2016;Levi et al, 2018;Raposo et al, 2012) and choice expectation (Booras et al, 2021;Talluri et al, 2021). When stimulus information is equally informative throughout the trial (Kiani et al, 2008;Levi et al, 2018) and the observer is able to report the decision at any time, like here, there is no need to integrate late information after the decision has been made.…”

“…When stimulus information is equally informative throughout the trial (Kiani et al, 2008;Levi et al, 2018) and the observer is able to report the decision at any time, like here, there is no need to integrate late information after the decision has been made. When stimulus durations are extended (Bronfman et al, 2016) or only late evidence is informative (Talluri et al, 2021;Levi et al, 2018) late-weighting profiles are observed. In this situation, early information would not reflect the state of the world relevant for the choice.…”

“…These differences in weighting profiles might relate to task specifics and stimulus features. Early profiles are observed when information throughout the trial is equally informative, while late profiles are related to instances where integrating early information is not sufficient to solve the trial and thus late integration is necessary (Bronfman et al, 2016;Levi et al, 2018;Talluri et al, 2021).…”