Learned temporal statistics guide information seeking and shape memory.

Lang, Emily A.; Geen, Camilla van; Tedeschi, Ellen; Marvin, Caroline B; Shohamy, Daphna

doi:10.1037/xge0001122

Cited by 9 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Doing so amounted to assessing how many of the first 20 seconds of each trial participants waited on average, thus factoring out the longer maximum waiting time in the LP condition (40 s in LP versus 20 s in HP). Consistent with previous results 14,15,17–19,29 , we found that the average AUC was significantly greater in the HP than the LP environment in the healthy control group (t(17) = 4.6; p = 0.00024, Figure 2B).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Lesions to different regions of frontal cortex have dissociable effects on voluntary persistence

van Geen,

Chen,

Kazinka

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Deciding how long to keep waiting for uncertain future rewards is a complex problem. Previous research has shown that choosing to stop waiting results from an evaluative process that weighs the subjective value of the awaited reward against the opportunity cost of waiting. In functional neuroimaging data, activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) tracks the dynamics of this evaluation, while activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and anterior insula (AI) ramps up before a decision to quit is made. Here, we provide causal evidence of the necessity of these brain regions for successful performance in a willingness-to-wait task.28 participants with frontal lobe lesions were tested on their ability to adaptively calibrate how long they waited for monetary rewards. We grouped the participants based on the location of their lesions, which were primarily in ventromedial, dorsomedial, or lateral parts of their prefrontal cortex (vmPFC, dmPFC, and lPFC, respectively), or in the anterior insula. We compared the performance of each subset of lesion participants to behavior in a control group without lesions (n=18). Finally, we fit a newly developed computational model to the data to glean a more mechanistic understanding of how lesions affect the cognitive processes underlying choice.We found that participants with lesions to the vmPFC waited less overall, while participants with lesions to the dmPFC and anterior insula were specifically impaired at calibrating their level of persistence to the environment. These behavioral effects were accounted for by systematic differences in parameter estimates from a computational model of task performance: while the vmPFC group showed reduced initial willingness to wait, lesions to the dmPFC/anterior insula were associated with slower learning from negative feedback.These findings corroborate the notion that failures of persistence can be driven by sophisticated cost-benefit analyses rather than lapses in self-control. They also support the functional specialization of different parts of the prefrontal cortex in service of voluntary persistence.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Lesions to different regions of frontal cortex have dissociable effects on voluntary persistence

van Geen,

Chen,

Kazinka

et al. 2023

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Consistent with this "temporal expectations" account of quitting, people do hold heavy-tailed beliefs about reward timing in many real-world situations (Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2006), such as waiting for a diet or exercise regimen to work (McGuire & Kable, 2013). In addition, experimental manipulations of reward timing expectations impact people's willingness to wait for delayed rewards (Fung et al, 2017;Kidd et al, 2013;Lang et al, 2021;Lempert et al, 2018;Massar & Chee, 2015;McGuire & Kable, 2012Michaelson et al, 2013;Michaelson & Munakata, 2016). Moreover, individual differences in wait times in the marshmallow task are strongly associated with childhood environmental circumstances, such as socioeconomic status and social support, which could be proxies for the sparseness and predictability of rewards in daily life (Michaelson & Munakata, 2020;Watts et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Pupillometric evidence for a temporal expectations-based account of persistence under temporal uncertainty

Lempert

Carballeira

Sehgal

et al. 2023

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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“…Consistent with this "temporal expectations" account of quitting, people do hold heavy-tailed beliefs about reward timing in many real-world situations (Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2006), such as waiting for a diet or exercise regimen to work (McGuire & Kable, 2013). In addition, experimental manipulations of reward timing expectations impact people's willingness to wait for delayed rewards (Fung et al, 2017;Kidd et al, 2013;Lang et al, 2021;Lempert et al, 2018;Massar & Chee, 2015;McGuire & Kable, 2012. Moreover, individual differences in wait times in the marshmallow task are strongly associated with childhood socioeconomic status, which could be a proxy for the sparseness and predictability of rewards in daily life (Watts et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Pupillometric evidence for a temporal expectations-based account of persistence under temporal uncertainty

Lempert¹,

Carballeira²,

Sehgal³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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People often quit waiting for delayed rewards when the exact timing of those rewards is uncertain. This behavior has often been attributed to self-control failure. Another possibility, however, is that quitting is the result of a rational decision-making process in the face of uncertainty, based on the decision maker’s expectations about the possible arrival times of the awaited reward. There are forms of temporal expectations (e.g., heavy-tailed) under which the expected time remaining until a reward arrives actually increases as time elapses. In those cases, the rational strategy is to quit waiting when the expected reward is no longer worth the expected time remaining. In order to arbitrate between the “limited self-control” and “temporal expectations” accounts of persistence, we measured pupil diameter during a persistence task, as a physiological marker of surprise (phasic responses) and effort (baseline diameter). Phasic pupil responses were elevated in response to reward receipt. Critically, the extent to which pupils dilated following rewards depended on the delay: people showed larger pupillary surprise responses the more delayed the reward was. This result suggests that people expect the reward less the longer they wait for it, a form of temporal expectations under which limiting persistence is rational. Moreover, baseline pupil diameter prior to quit events was not associated with how long the participant had been waiting, but rather, depended on how atypical the quit decision was compared to the participant’s usual behavior. Together, these data provide physiological evidence for a temporal expectations account of persistence under temporal uncertainty.

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Learned temporal statistics guide information seeking and shape memory.

Cited by 9 publications

References 38 publications

Lesions to different regions of frontal cortex have dissociable effects on voluntary persistence

Lesions to different regions of frontal cortex have dissociable effects on voluntary persistence

Pupillometric evidence for a temporal expectations-based account of persistence under temporal uncertainty

Pupillometric evidence for a temporal expectations-based account of persistence under temporal uncertainty

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