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Two sources of uncertainty independently modulate temporal expectancy.

ABSTRACT: The environment is shaped by two sources of temporal uncertainty: the discrete probability of whether an event will occur and-if it does-the continuous probability of when it will happen. These two types of uncertainty are fundamental to every form of anticipatory behavior including learning, decision-making, and motor planning. It remains unknown how the brain models the two uncertainty parameters and how they interact in anticipation. It is commonly assumed that the discrete probability of whether an event will occur has a fixed effect on event expectancy over time. In contrast, we first demonstrate that this pattern is highly dynamic and monotonically increases across time. Intriguingly, this behavior is independent of the continuous probability of when an event will occur. The effect of this continuous probability on anticipation is commonly proposed to be driven by the hazard rate (HR) of events. We next show that the HR fails to account for behavior and propose a model of event expectancy based on the probability density function of events. Our results hold for both vision and audition, suggesting independence of the representation of the two uncertainties from sensory input modality. These findings enrich the understanding of fundamental anticipatory processes and have provocative implications for many aspects of behavior and its neural underpinnings.

SUBMITTER: Grabenhorst M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8072397 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Two sources of uncertainty independently modulate temporal expectancy.

Grabenhorst Matthias M Maloney Laurence T LT Poeppel David D Michalareas Georgios G

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20210401 16

The environment is shaped by two sources of temporal uncertainty: the discrete probability of whether an event will occur and-if it does-the continuous probability of when it will happen. These two types of uncertainty are fundamental to every form of anticipatory behavior including learning, decision-making, and motor planning. It remains unknown how the brain models the two uncertainty parameters and how they interact in anticipation. It is commonly assumed that the discrete probability of whe ...[more]

PMID: 33853943

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Project description:[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General on Jan 14 2021 (see record 2021-07705-001). In the article, formatting for UK Research Councils funding was omitted. The author note and copyright line now reflect the standard acknowledgment of and formatting for the funding received for this article. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Attention determines which cues receive processing and are learned about. Learning, however, leads to attentional biases. In the study of animal learning, in some circumstances, cues that have been previously predictive of their consequences are subsequently learned about more than are nonpredictive cues, suggesting that they receive more attention. In other circumstances, cues that have previously led to uncertain consequences are learned about more than are predictive cues. In human learning, there is a clear role for predictiveness, but a role for uncertainty has been less clear. Here, in a human learning task, we show that cues that led to uncertain outcomes were subsequently learned about more than were cues that were previously predictive of their outcomes. This effect occurred when there were few uncertain cues. When the number of uncertain cues was increased, attention switched to predictive cues. This pattern of results was found for cues (1) that were uncertain because they led to 2 different outcomes equally often in a nonpredictable manner and (2) that were used in a nonlinear discrimination and were not predictive individually but were predictive in combination with other cues. This suggests that both the opposing predictiveness and uncertainty effects were determined by the relationship between individual cues and outcomes rather than the predictive strength of combined cues. These results demonstrate that learning affects attention; however, the precise nature of the effect on attention depends on the level of task complexity, which reflects a potential switch between exploration and exploitation of cues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Dataset Information

Two sources of uncertainty independently modulate temporal expectancy.

Publications

Two sources of uncertainty independently modulate temporal expectancy.

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