Selective Attention Increases Choice Certainty in Human Decision Making

Zizlsperger, Leopold; Sauvigny, Thomas; Haarmeier, Thomas

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041136

Cited by 29 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…(1). In accordance with our previous study 12 , paired t-tests on these standardized measures revealed not only significant increases for decision accuracy and choice confidence with attention (both t-tests: Po0.001; Fig. 1e, positive D z-values for each category), but also a significantly stronger increase of the confidence measure (t-test: P ¼ 0.001; labelled grey in Fig.…”

supporting

confidence: 91%

“…Reflecting the dependency of task difficulty on motion coherence, discrimination performance increased for higher motion coherences in both attention conditions as expected 12,14 . Furthermore, we found higher sensitivity to visual motion for valid as compared with invalid cues as indicated by higher mean accuracy with attention for each of the four coherence levels (mean accuracy for 10/20/30/ 40% coherence, valid cues: 0.53/0.77/0.87/0.90; invalid cues: 0.42/0.63/0.75/0.83; Fig.…”

supporting

confidence: 62%

“…Complemented by numerical confidence ratings, our data revealed a dissociation of choice accuracy and certainty with a significantly stronger influence of voluntary top-down attention on subjective performance measures than on objective performance 12 . Selective attention is capable of dissociating a perceptual decision and the confidence in it by affecting them differently.…”

mentioning

confidence: 73%

“…Since in nonhuman primates choice certainty is encoded by the same population of neurons as the perceptual decision and the saccadic eye movement indicating the direction decision 7,8 , we here separated perceptual integration and motor planning by requesting subjects to report their decision by hand movements in delayed-response paradigms. To dissociate physiological representations of objective performance and subjective confidence even further, in a first experiment we asked one group of subjects to indicate the perceived direction of moving random dots and the confidence in that perceptual decision while stimuli were cued validly and invalidly [12][13][14] . In the second experiment, we did not cue selective attention but the motor effector to identify electrophysiological correlates of decision confidence in motor preparation.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Cortical representations of confidence in a visual perceptual decision

et al. 2014

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To date the exact neuronal implementation of decision confidence has been subject to little research. Here we explore electroencephalographic correlates of human choice certainty in a visual motion discrimination task for either spatial attention or motor effector cue instructions. We demonstrate electrophysiological correlates of choice certainty that evolve as early as 300 ms after stimulus onset and resemble the primary visual motion representations in early visual cortex. These correlates do not emerge unless or until the subject unambiguously knows which of the competing visual stimuli is actually relevant to behaviour. They extend beyond stimulus presentation up to the motor response but are independent of the motor effector. Our findings suggest that perceptual confidence evolves in parallel with representations of stimulus properties and is dedicated to one specific aspect of the visual world. Its electroencephalographic correlates can be disentangled from representations of sensory evidence, objective discrimination performance and overt motor behaviour.

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confidence: 91%

supporting

confidence: 62%

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confidence: 73%

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confidence: 99%

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Cortical representations of confidence in a visual perceptual decision

et al. 2014

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“…These effects are the signatures of attention in humans and nonhuman primates (2,3,30). In addition, in chickens, as in humans, spatial cueing increased choice certainty (21).…”

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confidence: 93%

Visuospatial selective attention in chickens

Sridharan

Ramamurthy

Schwarz

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Voluntary control of attention promotes intelligent, adaptive behaviors by enabling the selective processing of information that is most relevant for making decisions. Despite extensive research on attention in primates, the capacity for selective attention in nonprimate species has never been quantified. Here we demonstrate selective attention in chickens by applying protocols that have been used to characterize visual spatial attention in primates. Chickens were trained to localize and report the vertical position of a target in the presence of task-relevant distracters. A spatial cue, the location of which varied across individual trials, indicated the horizontal, but not vertical, position of the upcoming target. Spatial cueing improved localization performance: accuracy (d′) increased and reaction times decreased in a space-specific manner. Distracters severely impaired perceptual performance, and this impairment was greatly reduced by spatial cueing. Signal detection analysis with an "indecision" model demonstrated that spatial cueing significantly increased choice certainty in localizing targets. By contrast, error-aversion certainty (certainty of not making an error) remained essentially constant across cueing protocols, target contrasts, and individuals. The results show that chickens shift spatial attention rapidly and dynamically, following principles of stimulus selection that closely parallel those documented in primates. The findings suggest that the mechanisms that control attention have been conserved through evolution, and establish chickens-a highly visual species that is easily trained and amenable to cutting-edge experimental technologiesas an attractive model for linking behavior to neural mechanisms of selective attention.T he capacity to select particular locations or stimuli for differential analysis and decision making is essential for any animal to behave intelligently in a complex environment. It follows that neural mechanisms that enable this capacity must have appeared early in evolution (1). In humans, and nonhuman primates, selective attention enables such adaptive behavior by selecting from all possible information the information that is most relevant for making decisions (2, 3). However, little is known about whether the capacity for selective attention exists in nonprimate vertebrate species.Studies that were intended to measure selective attention in nonprimate species have produced inconclusive results for several reasons. First, much of the previous work has inferred the capacity for selective attention based on selective learning or selective reporting of specific cue features, both in birds (4) and in rodents (5). For example, in highly cited work on feature-based attention (4), pigeons were reinforced for pecking on targets that contained combinations of two features (e.g., color and shape). In later trials, when the features were presented individually, they pecked almost exclusively on targets with only one of the two features (e.g., color, ignoring shape). The results ...

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Attention-Based Design and Selective Exposure Amid COVID-19 Misinformation Sharing

Amin

Ali

Smeaton

2021

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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One of the significant limitations in human behaviour when receiving online information is our lack of visual cognitive abilities, the ability to pay greater attention in a short time. The question arises about how we handle online messages, which contain and send people with the same associated interests as ourselves, regarding social influences and individual beliefs. This study aims to provide some insight into misinformation sharing. The availability of enormous amounts of COVID-19 information makes the selectivity of messages likely limited by the distortion of perceptions in the communicating environment. It is also in line with the fact that human attention is essentially limited and depends on the conditions and tasks at hand. To understand this phenomenon, we proposed a Tuning Attention Model (TAM). The model proposes tuning and intervene in a user's attention behaviour by incorporating an attention-based design when users decide to share COVID-19 misinformation. In pilot study results, we found that attention behaviour negatively correlated with misinformation sharing behaviour. The results justify that when attention behaviour increased, misinformation sharing behaviour will decrease. We suggest an attention-based design approached on social media application's that could intervene in user attention and avoid selective exposure caused by the spread of COVID-19 misinformation. The study expected to produce continuous knowledge leading to non-coercive handling of sharing COVID-19 misinformation behaviour and laying the basis for overcoming misinformation issues.

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Selective Attention Increases Choice Certainty in Human Decision Making

Cited by 29 publications

References 33 publications

Cortical representations of confidence in a visual perceptual decision

Cortical representations of confidence in a visual perceptual decision

Visuospatial selective attention in chickens

Attention-Based Design and Selective Exposure Amid COVID-19 Misinformation Sharing

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