Confidence as a Common Currency between Vision and Audition

PLoS One. 2016 Jan 25;11(1):e0147901. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0147901. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

The idea of a common currency underlying our choice behaviour has played an important role in sciences of behaviour, from neurobiology to psychology and economics. However, while it has been mainly investigated in terms of values, with a common scale on which goods would be evaluated and compared, the question of a common scale for subjective probabilities and confidence in particular has received only little empirical investigation so far. The present study extends previous work addressing this question, by showing that confidence can be compared across visual and auditory decisions, with the same precision as for the comparison of two trials within the same task. We discuss the possibility that confidence could serve as a common currency when describing our choices to ourselves and to others.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Choice Behavior
  • Cognition
  • Hearing*
  • Humans
  • Perception
  • Psychophysics
  • Reaction Time
  • Vision, Ocular*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by an Agence Nationale de la Recherche grant to PM [ANR-10-BLAN-1910 “Visual Confidence”]. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.