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Research Articles, Behavioral/Cognitive

A Postdecisional Neural Marker of Confidence Predicts Information-Seeking in Decision-Making

Kobe Desender, Peter Murphy, Annika Boldt, Tom Verguts and Nick Yeung
Journal of Neuroscience 24 April 2019, 39 (17) 3309-3319; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2620-18.2019
Kobe Desender
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg-Eppendorf 20251, Germany,
2Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent 9000, Belgium,
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Peter Murphy
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg-Eppendorf 20251, Germany,
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Annika Boldt
3Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AZ, United Kingdom, and
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Tom Verguts
2Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent 9000, Belgium,
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Nick Yeung
4Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6HG, United Kingdom
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Abstract

Theoretical work predicts that decisions made with low confidence should lead to increased information-seeking. This is an adaptive strategy because it can increase the quality of a decision, and previous behavioral work has shown that decision-makers engage in such confidence-driven information-seeking. The present study aimed to characterize the neural markers that mediate the relationship between confidence and information-seeking. A paradigm was used in which 17 human participants (9 male) made an initial perceptual decision, and then decided whether or not they wanted to sample more evidence before committing to a final decision and confidence judgment. Predecisional and postdecisional event-related potential components were similarly modulated by the level of confidence and by information-seeking choices. Time-resolved multivariate decoding of scalp EEG signals first revealed that both information-seeking choices and decision confidence could be decoded from the time of the initial decision to the time of the subsequent information-seeking choice (within-condition decoding). No above-chance decoding was visible in the preresponse time window. Crucially, a classifier trained to decode high versus low confidence predicted information-seeking choices after the initial perceptual decision (across-condition decoding). This time window corresponds to that of a postdecisional neural marker of confidence. Collectively, our findings demonstrate, for the first time, that neural indices of confidence are functionally involved in information-seeking decisions.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Despite substantial current interest in neural signatures of our sense of confidence, it remains largely unknown how confidence is used to regulate behavior. Here, we devised a task in which human participants could decide whether or not to sample additional decision-relevant information at a small monetary cost. Using neural recordings, we could predict such information-seeking choices based on a neural signature of decision confidence. Our study illuminates a neural link between decision confidence and adaptive behavioral control.

  • confidence
  • decision-making
  • error positivity
  • information sampling
  • information-seeking
  • metacognition

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.

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The Journal of Neuroscience: 39 (17)
Journal of Neuroscience
Vol. 39, Issue 17
24 Apr 2019
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A Postdecisional Neural Marker of Confidence Predicts Information-Seeking in Decision-Making
Kobe Desender, Peter Murphy, Annika Boldt, Tom Verguts, Nick Yeung
Journal of Neuroscience 24 April 2019, 39 (17) 3309-3319; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2620-18.2019

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A Postdecisional Neural Marker of Confidence Predicts Information-Seeking in Decision-Making
Kobe Desender, Peter Murphy, Annika Boldt, Tom Verguts, Nick Yeung
Journal of Neuroscience 24 April 2019, 39 (17) 3309-3319; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2620-18.2019
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Keywords

  • confidence
  • decision-making
  • error positivity
  • information sampling
  • information-seeking
  • metacognition

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