TY - JOUR
T1 - Tracking priors and their replacement
T2 - Mental dynamics of decision making in the number-line task
AU - Dotan, Dror
AU - Dehaene, Stanislas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022/7
Y1 - 2022/7
N2 - Several theories of decision making assume that optimal decisions are reached by computing a prior distribution over possible responses, and then updating it according to the evidence received. We show how this prior replacement, with its two processing stages, can be captured with a simple behavioral method: tracking the finger movement as participants point to a response location. On each trial, participants saw a number and pointed to its location on a number line. In two experiments, we manipulated either the prior, via the distribution of target numbers, or the initial finger direction, via explicit instruction. In both experiments, when a trial started the participants pointed towards the instructed direction, and in the last part of the trial they pointed towards the target. Critically, between these two stages there was a third, interim stage in which the participants pointed towards the prior before deviating towards the target. Transient pointing towards the prior was observed even when it induced a brief deviation away from the target. This pattern fits a model wherein decisions are first driven by prior knowledge, followed by the accumulation of trial-specific evidence. We propose that the number-to-position mapping task with finger tracking is a powerful paradigm to investigate fine-grained aspects of priors in a simple decision-making scenario.
AB - Several theories of decision making assume that optimal decisions are reached by computing a prior distribution over possible responses, and then updating it according to the evidence received. We show how this prior replacement, with its two processing stages, can be captured with a simple behavioral method: tracking the finger movement as participants point to a response location. On each trial, participants saw a number and pointed to its location on a number line. In two experiments, we manipulated either the prior, via the distribution of target numbers, or the initial finger direction, via explicit instruction. In both experiments, when a trial started the participants pointed towards the instructed direction, and in the last part of the trial they pointed towards the target. Critically, between these two stages there was a third, interim stage in which the participants pointed towards the prior before deviating towards the target. Transient pointing towards the prior was observed even when it induced a brief deviation away from the target. This pattern fits a model wherein decisions are first driven by prior knowledge, followed by the accumulation of trial-specific evidence. We propose that the number-to-position mapping task with finger tracking is a powerful paradigm to investigate fine-grained aspects of priors in a simple decision-making scenario.
KW - Decision making
KW - Finger tracking
KW - Number-to-position task
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85125115752&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105069
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105069
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C2 - 35219953
AN - SCOPUS:85125115752
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 224
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
M1 - 105069
ER -