Search

Prevailing theories propose that confidence in two-alternative forced-choice decisions is based on the probability that the selected option is correct. However, recent findings from three-alternative tasks suggest that adults' confidence might irrationally reflect the difference between the probabilities of the best and next-best options only, with other options disregarded. Using a novel probability task (in which participants guess the colour of a ball to be randomly selected from varying distributions) and a uniquely sensitive confidence measure, we investigated metacognition in multi-option decision making in children (N = 97, aged 6-9-years) and adults (N = 51). Contrary to previous findings, children's and adults' confidence was primarily explained by the probability of the best option. However, preliminary findings suggest that among older children and adults, additional irrelevant factors also accounted for unique variance in confidence. In some contexts, human confidence might be initially calibrated rationally but increasingly reflect irrational factors over development.

The ‘Self’ has a prioritized cognitive status, attributed to an automatic bottom-up attentional enhancement for self-relevant stimuli. Two predictions follow if self-relevant information is automatically boosted. First, processing should be enhanced for self- compared to other-relevant targets. Second, interference should be greater for self- compared to other-relevant distractors. To investigate these predictions, we adapted a motion reproduction task. Participants first learned to associate a colour (blue, pink) with themselves and a stranger (other), then viewed a label (YOU or OTHER) and two different coloured superimposed random dot kinematograms (RDKs; blue, pink). A response dial recorded participants’ reproduced direction of motion for the coloured RDK associated with the presented label. Facilitation and interference for self- and other-labelled features was assessed by the angular difference between the reported and true direction of motion (signed error magnitude). There was a small, but reliable response bias in direction of distractor motion showing that attentional selection was imperfect. Further regression-based analyses quantified the degree to which self and other-related stimuli influenced responses (decision weights). As predicted, decision weights for target stimuli showed a significant advantage for self- compared with other-relevant motions. By contrast distractor weights did not differ significantly between self- and other-relevant features, suggesting self-relevance did not modulate the degree of interference and self-relevant stimuli did not automatically capture attention. Overall, we show that feature-based attention is enhanced for self-associated sensory input, but only when task-relevant.

How are the advantage relations between a set of agents playing a game organized and how do they reflect the structure of the game? In this paper, we illustrate 'Principal Trade-off Analysis' (PTA), a decomposition method that embeds games into a low-dimensional feature space. We argue that the embeddings are more revealing than previously demonstrated by developing an analogy to Principal Component Analysis (PCA). PTA represents an arbitrary two-player zero-sum game as linear combination of simple games via the projection of policy profiles into orthogonal 2D feature planes. We show that the feature planes represent unique strategic trade-offs and truncation of the sequence provides insightful model reduction and visualization. We demonstrate the validity of PTA on a quartet of games (Kuhn poker, RPS + 2, Blotto and Pokemon). In Kuhn poker, PTA clearly identifies the trade-off between bluffing and calling. In Blotto, PTA identifies game symmetries and specifies strategic trade-offs associated with distinct win conditions. These symmetries reveal limitations of PTA unaddressed in previous work. For Pokemon, PTA recovers clusters that naturally correspond to Pokemon types, correctly identifies the designed trade-off between those types, and discovers a rock-paper-scissor (RPS) cycle in the Pokemon generation type – all absent any specific information except game outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gaze cueing effect is the tendency for people to respond faster to targets appearing at locations gazed at by others, compared with locations gazed away from by others. The effect is robust, widely studied, and is an influential finding within social cognition. Formal evidence accumulation models provide the dominant theoretical account of the cognitive processes underlying speeded decision-making, but they have rarely been applied to social cognition research. In this study, using a combination of individual-level and hierarchical computational modelling techniques, we applied evidence accumulation models to gaze cueing data (three data sets total, N = 171, 139,001 trials) for the first time to assess the relative capacity that an attentional orienting mechanism and information processing mechanisms have for explaining the gaze cueing effect. We found that most participants were best described by the attentional orienting mechanism, such that response times were slower at gazed away from locations because they had to reorient to the target before they could process the cue. However, we found evidence for individual differences, whereby the models suggested that some gaze cueing effects were driven by a short allocation of information processing resources to the gazed at location, allowing for a brief period where orienting and processing could occur in parallel. There was exceptionally little evidence to suggest any sustained reallocation of information processing resources neither at the group nor individual level. We discuss how this individual variability might represent credible individual differences in the cognitive mechanisms that subserve behaviourally observed gaze cueing effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central question in working memory research concerns the degree to which information in working memory is accessible to other cognitive processes (e.g., decision-making). Theories assuming that the focus of attention can only store a single object at a time require the focus to orient to a target representation before further processing can occur. The need to orient the focus of attention implies that single-object accounts typically predict response time costs associated with object selection even when working memory is not full (i.e., memory load is less than 4 items). For other theories that assume storage of multiple items in the focus of attention, predictions depend on specific assumptions about the way resources are allocated among items held in the focus, and how this affects the time course of retrieval of items from the focus. These broad theoretical accounts have been difficult to distinguish because conventional analyses fail to separate components of empirical response times related to decision-making from components related to selection and retrieval processes associated with accessing information in working memory. To better distinguish these response time components from one another, we analyze data from a probed visual working memory task using extensions of the diffusion decision model. Analysis of model parameters revealed that increases in memory load resulted in (a) reductions in the quality of the underlying stimulus representations in a manner consistent with a sample size model of visual working memory capacity and (b) systematic increases in the time needed to selectively access a probed representation in memory. The results are consistent with single-object theories of the focus of attention. The results are also consistent with a subset of theories that assume a multiobject focus of attention in which resource allocation diminishes both the quality and accessibility of the underlying representations.