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Reminders of past choices bias decisions for reward in humans

Author(s): Bornstein, Aaron M.; Khaw, Mel W.; Shohamy, Daphna; Daw, Nathaniel D.

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Abstract: We provide evidence that decisions are made by consulting memories for individual past experiences, and that this process can be biased in favour of past choices using incidental reminders. First, in a standard rewarded choice task, we show that a model that estimates value at decision-time using individual samples of past outcomes fits choices and decision-related neural activity better than a canonical incremental learning model. In a second experiment, we bias this sampling process by incidentally reminding participants of individual past decisions. The next decision after a reminder shows a strong influence of the action taken and value received on the reminded trial. These results provide new empirical support for a decision architecture that relies on samples of individual past choice episodes rather than incrementally averaged rewards in evaluating options and has suggestive implications for the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms.
Publication Date: 27-Jun-2017
Citation: Bornstein, Aaron M, Khaw, Mel W, Shohamy, Daphna, Daw, Nathaniel D. (2017). Reminders of past choices bias decisions for reward in humans.. Nature communications, 8 (15958 - ?. doi:10.1038/ncomms15958
DOI: doi:10.1038/ncomms15958
ISSN: 2041-1723
EISSN: 2041-1723
Language: eng
Type of Material: Journal Article
Journal/Proceeding Title: nature communications
Version: Final published version. This is an open access article.



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