Movement characteristics impact decision-making and vice versa

Carsten, Thomas; Fievez, Fanny; Duqué, Julie

doi:10.1101/2022.02.02.478832

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 95 publications

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“…Importantly, such a hierarchical structure suggests that the subjective value placed on action choices—in neuroeconomics terms, their utility—not only influences movement decisions about where to reach ( Wolpert and Landy, 2012 ), but is itself influenced in turn by movement decisions about how to reach. Although surprising, this is consistent with recent work showing that selecting motor parameters like movement speed can influence more cognitive processes (i.e., the speed of decision-making; Carsten et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Motor Plans under Uncertainty Reflect a Trade-Off between Maximizing Reward and Success

Wong

Green

Isaacs

2022

eNeuro

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When faced with multiple potential movement options, individuals either reach directly to one of the options, or initiate a reach intermediate between the options. It remains unclear why people generate these two types of behaviors. Using the go-before-you-know task (commonly used to study behavior under choice uncertainty) in humans, we examined two key questions. First, do these two types of responses actually reflect distinct movement strategies? If so, the relative desirability (i.e., weighing the success likelihood vs the attainable reward) of the two target options would not need to be computed identically for direct and intermediate reaches. We showed that indeed, when reward and success likelihood differed between the two options, reach direction was preferentially biased toward different directions for direct versus intermediate reaches. Importantly, this suggests that the computation of subjective values depends on the choice of movement strategy. Second, what drives individual differences in how people respond under uncertainty? We found that risk/reward-seeking individuals tended to generate more intermediate reaches and were more responsive to changes in reward, suggesting these movements may reflect a strategy to maximize reward versus success. Together, these findings suggest that when faced with choice uncertainty, individuals adopt movement strategies consistent with their risk/reward attitude, preferentially biasing behavior toward exogenous rewards or endogenous success and consequently modulating the relative desirability of the available options.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Motor Plans under Uncertainty Reflect a Trade-Off between Maximizing Reward and Success

Wong

Green

Isaacs

2022

eNeuro

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Deciding While Acting—Mid-Movement Decisions Are More Strongly Affected by Action Probability than Reward Amount

Ulbrich

Gail

2023

eNeuro

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When deciding while acting, such as sequentially selecting targets during naturalistic foraging, movement trajectories reveal the dynamics of the unfolding decision process. Ongoing and planned actions may impact decisions in these situations in addition to expected reward outcomes. Here, we test how strongly humans weigh and how fast they integrate individual constituents of expected value, namely the prior probability of an action (PROB) and the prior expected reward amount associated with an action (AMNT), when deciding based on the combination of both together during an ongoing movement. Unlike other decision-making studies, we focus on PROB and AMNT priors, and not final evidence, in that correct actions were either instructed or could be chosen freely. This means, there was no decision-making under risk. We show that both priors gradually influence movement trajectories already before mid-movement instructions of the correct target and bias free-choice behavior. These effects were consistently stronger for PROB compared to AMNT priors. Participants biased their movements towards a high-PROB target, committed to it faster when instructed or freely chosen, and chose it more frequently even when it was associated with a lower AMNT prior than the alternative option. Despite these differences in effect magnitude, the time course of both priors’ effect on movement direction was highly similar. We conclude that prior action probability, and hence the associated possibility to plan actions accordingly, has higher behavioral relevance than prior action value for decisions that are expressed by adjusting already ongoing movements.Significance StatementNatural behavior, like foraging or hunting prey, requires animals and humans to select their next action during ongoing movements, thereby updating movements as the decision process unfolds. Here, we study the magnitude and time course with which prior action probability and prior expectancy of reward amount influence the selection between two competing movements in humans. By simultaneously but independently manipulating both priors in individual decisions, and by avoiding confounds of reward probability, we show that both priors affect the decision process with different magnitude yet comparable time courses. Our results emphasize the prioritized relevance of action probabilities over action values on mid-movement decisions.

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Movement characteristics impact decision-making and vice versa

Cited by 2 publications

References 95 publications

Motor Plans under Uncertainty Reflect a Trade-Off between Maximizing Reward and Success

Motor Plans under Uncertainty Reflect a Trade-Off between Maximizing Reward and Success

Deciding While Acting—Mid-Movement Decisions Are More Strongly Affected by Action Probability than Reward Amount

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