Changes-of-mind in the absence of new post-decision evidence

Nadim A A Atiya, Arkady Zgonnikov, Denis O’Hora, Martin Schoemann, Stefan Scherbaum and KongFatt Wong-Lin

PLOS Computational Biology, 2020, vol. 16, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: Decisions are occasionally accompanied by changes-of-mind. While considered a hallmark of cognitive flexibility, the mechanisms underlying changes-of-mind remain elusive. Previous studies on perceptual decision making have focused on changes-of-mind that are primarily driven by the accumulation of additional noisy sensory evidence after the initial decision. In a motion discrimination task, we demonstrate that changes-of-mind can occur even in the absence of additional evidence after the initial decision. Unlike previous studies of changes-of-mind, the majority of changes-of-mind in our experiment occurred in trials with prolonged initial response times. This suggests a distinct mechanism underlying such changes. Using a neural circuit model of decision uncertainty and change-of-mind behaviour, we demonstrate that this phenomenon is associated with top-down signals mediated by an uncertainty-monitoring neural population. Such a mechanism is consistent with recent neurophysiological evidence showing a link between changes-of-mind and elevated top-down neural activity. Our model explains the long response times associated with changes-of-mind through high decision uncertainty levels in such trials, and accounts for the observed motor response trajectories. Overall, our work provides a computational framework that explains changes-of-mind in the absence of new post-decision evidence.Author summary: We used limited availability of sensory evidence during a standard motion discrimination task, and demonstrated that changes-of-mind could occur long after sensory information was no longer available. Unlike previous studies, our experiment further indicated that changes-of-mind were strongly linked to slow response time. We used a reduced version of a previously developed neural computational model of decision uncertainty and changes-of-mind to account for these experimental observations. Importantly, our model showed that the replication of these experimental results required a strong link between changes-of-mind and high decision uncertainty (i.e. low decision confidence), supporting the notion that changes-of-mind are related to decision uncertainty or confidence.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007149 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/fil ... 07149&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pcbi00:1007149

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007149

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Computational Biology from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ploscompbiol ().