Reward learning and working memory: effects of massed versus spaced training and post-learning delay period

Wimmer, G. Elliott; Poldrack, Russell A.

doi:10.1101/2020.03.19.997098

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 63 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…With the development of online testing techniques, it is becoming easier to implement extended massive training in humans [ 116 ]. Translated in the field of decision-making under risk, these experiments would provide crucial insights into the impact of extensive training in risk preferences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The description–experience gap: a challenge for the neuroeconomics of decision-making under uncertainty

Garcia

Cerrotti

Palminteri

2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The experimental investigation of decision-making in humans relies on two distinct types of paradigms, involving either description- or experience-based choices. In description-based paradigms, decision variables (i.e. payoffs and probabilities) are explicitly communicated by means of symbols. In experience-based paradigms decision variables are learnt from trial-by-trial feedback. In the decision-making literature, ‘description–experience gap’ refers to the fact that different biases are observed in the two experimental paradigms. Remarkably, well-documented biases of description-based choices, such as under-weighting of rare events and loss aversion, do not apply to experience-based decisions. Here, we argue that the description–experience gap represents a major challenge, not only to current decision theories, but also to the neuroeconomics research framework, which relies heavily on the translation of neurophysiological findings between human and non-human primate research. In fact, most non-human primate neurophysiological research relies on behavioural designs that share features of both description- and experience-based choices. As a consequence, it is unclear whether the neural mechanisms built from non-human primate electrophysiology should be linked to description-based or experience-based decision-making processes. The picture is further complicated by additional methodological gaps between human and non-human primate neuroscience research. After analysing these methodological challenges, we conclude proposing new lines of research to address them. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Existence and prevalence of economic behaviours among non-human primates’.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The description–experience gap: a challenge for the neuroeconomics of decision-making under uncertainty

Garcia

Cerrotti

Palminteri

2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…With the development of online testing techniques, it is becoming easier to implement extended massive training in humans [109]. Translated in the field of decision-making under risk, these experiments would provide crucial insights into the impact of extensive training in risk preferences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The description-experience gap: a challenge for the neuroeconomics of decision-making under uncertainty

Garcia¹,

Cerrotti²,

Palminteri³

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The experimental investigation of decision-making in humans relies on two distinct types of paradigms, involving either description- or experience-based choices. In description-based paradigms decision variables (i.e., payoffs and probabilities) are explicitly communicated by mean of symbols. In experience-based paradigms decision variables are learnt from trial-by-trial feedback. In the decision-making literature ‘description-experience gap’ refers to the fact that different biases are observed in the two experimental paradigms. Remarkably, well-documented biases of description-based choices, such as under-weighting of rare events and loss aversion, do not apply to experience-based decisions. Here we argue that the description-experience gap represents a major challenge, not only to current decision theories, but also to the neuroeconomics research framework, which reliesheavily on the translation of neurophysiological findings between human and non-human primate research. In fact, most non-human primate neurophysiological research relies on behavioural designs that share features of both description and experience-based choices. As a consequence, it is unclear whether the neural mechanisms discovered in non-human primate electrophysiology should be linked to description-based or experience-based decision-making processes. The picture is further complicated by additional methodological gaps between human and non-human primate neural research. After analysing these methodological challenges, we conclude proposing new lines of research to address them.

show abstract

“…WM is an effortful and flexible process for holding a limited amount of information for a short amount of time (Wilhelm et al, 2013). Recent work in stimulus-action association learning tasks has taken advantage of WM's sensitivity to delay/interference and capacity limits to highlight its important contributions to learning alongside RL (Collins, 2018;Collins & Frank, 2012;van de Vijver & Ligneul, 2019;Viejo et al, 2015;Wimmer & Poldrack, 2020).…”

Section: Episodic Memory Contributions To Working Memory-supported Re...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Episodic memory contributions to working memory-supported reinforcement learning

Hong,

Zou,

Yoo

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reinforcement learning (RL) frameworks have been extremely successful at capturing how biological agents learn to make rewarding choices. However, there is also increasing evidence that multiple cognitive processes, including working memory (WM) and episodic memory (EM), support such learning in parallel with value-based mechanisms such as RL. Here, we investigate EM’s role in a context where both RL and WM are known to strongly support learning. We develop two new experimental paradigms to isolate EM’s contributions, using trial-unique signals (Experiment 1) and temporal context effects (Experiment 2) to tag EM. As predicted, our results across both experiments consistently showed a weak role of EM in learning alongside RL and WM. However, surprisingly, we showed that EM’s contributions did not improve overall behavior; instead, participants appeared to only encode in or retrieve from EM part of a past trial’s information (the stimulus-action choice, without outcome), leading to characteristic error patterns. Across both experiments, computational modeling confirmed a small contribution of traces of past stimulus-action (association) events stored in EM to learning behavior. Our results shed light on the format of EM traces and how they support decision-making.

show abstract

Reward learning and working memory: effects of massed versus spaced training and post-learning delay period

Cited by 6 publications

References 63 publications

The description–experience gap: a challenge for the neuroeconomics of decision-making under uncertainty

The description–experience gap: a challenge for the neuroeconomics of decision-making under uncertainty

The description-experience gap: a challenge for the neuroeconomics of decision-making under uncertainty

Episodic memory contributions to working memory-supported reinforcement learning

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About