The behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying the tracking of expertise.

ABSTRACT: Evaluating the abilities of others is fundamental for successful economic and social behavior. We investigated the computational and neurobiological basis of ability tracking by designing an fMRI task that required participants to use and update estimates of both people and algorithms' expertise through observation of their predictions. Behaviorally, we find a model-based algorithm characterized subject predictions better than several alternative models. Notably, when the agent's prediction was concordant rather than discordant with the subject's own likely prediction, participants credited people more than algorithms for correct predictions and penalized them less for incorrect predictions. Neurally, many components of the mentalizing network-medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate g

SUBMITTER: Boorman ED 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3878380 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature