Adaptive History Biases Result from Confidence-Weighted Accumulation of past Choices.

ABSTRACT: Perceptual decision-making is biased by previous events, including the history of preceding choices: observers tend to repeat (or alternate) their judgments of the sensory environment more often than expected by chance. Computational models postulate that these so-called choice history biases result from the accumulation of internal decision signals across trials. Here, we provide psychophysical evidence for such a mechanism and its adaptive utility. Male and female human observers performed different variants of a challenging visual motion discrimination task near psychophysical threshold. In a first experiment, we decoupled categorical perceptual choices and motor responses on a trial-by-trial basis. Choice history bias was explained by previous perceptual choices, not motor responses, h

SUBMITTER: Braun A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5858589 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature