Adaptable History Biases in Human Perceptual Decisions
Adaptable history biases in human perceptual decisions Arman Abrahamyana,b,1, Laura Luz Silvac,2, Steven C. Dakinc,3, Matteo Carandinic, and Justin L. Gardnera,b aDepartment of Psychology and Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; bLaboratory for Human Systems Neuroscience, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan; and cUCL Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, London EC1V 9EL, United Kingdom Edited by J. Anthony Movshon, New York University, New York, NY, and approved May 9, 2016 (received for review September 21, 2015) When making choices under conditions of perceptual uncertainty, based solely on the present sensory evidence (21) and to use success past experience can play a vital role. However, it can also lead to or failure feedback only to optimize their use of such sensory in- biases that worsen decisions. Consistent with previous observations, formation (22). However, both mice (14) and humans (15, 17, 18) we found that human choices are influenced by the success or failure make choices that are biased by their recent history of successes and of past choices even in a standard two-alternative detection task, failures and are thus suboptimal. Such biases, where prior beliefs where choice history is irrelevant. The typical bias was one that made rather than evidence guide behavior, are a form of fallacy, similar to the subject switch choices after a failure. These choice history biases the gambler’s fallacy or hot-hand fallacy (23, cf. 24). led to poorer performance and were similar for observers in different Why might choice history biases remain despite degrading countries.
[Show full text]