The production and perception of randomness.

Nickerson, Raymond S.

doi:10.1037/0033-295x.109.2.330

Cited by 205 publications

(216 citation statements)

References 111 publications

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“…This finding is in line with previous research on the production of random response sequences (e.g. Nickerson, 2002). A frequently reported finding from studies that have looked into the concept of randomness is that participants, when asked to generate random binary sequences, have a tendency to produce sequences that consist of slightly more alternations than would be expected by chance (Nickerson, 2002).…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Nickerson, 2002). A frequently reported finding from studies that have looked into the concept of randomness is that participants, when asked to generate random binary sequences, have a tendency to produce sequences that consist of slightly more alternations than would be expected by chance (Nickerson, 2002). This is exactly what we observed in the current study, further supporting our conclusion that participants have been responding in a random way to the best of their abilities.…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptsupporting

confidence: 90%

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Influences of unconscious priming on voluntary actions: Role of the rostral cingulate zone

et al. 2016

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The ability to make voluntary, free choices is fundamental to what it means to be human. A key brain region that is involved in free choices is the rostral cingulate zone (RCZ), which is part of the medial frontal cortex. Previous research has shown that activity in this brain region can be modulated by bottom-up information while making free choices. The current study extends those findings, and shows, for the first time, that activation in the RCZ can also be modulated by subliminal information. We used a subliminal response priming paradigm to bias free and cued choices. We observed more activation in the RCZ when participants made a choice that went against the prime's suggestion, compared to when they chose according to the prime. This shows that the RCZ plays an important role in overcoming externally-triggered conflict between different response options, even when the stimuli triggering this conflict are not consciously perceived. Our results suggest that an important mechanism of endogenous action in the RCZ may therefore involve exerting an internally-generated action choice against conflicting influences, such as external sensory evidence. We further found that subliminal information also modulated activity in the anterior insula and the supramarginal gyrus.

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Section: Accepted M Manuscriptsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptsupporting

confidence: 90%

Influences of unconscious priming on voluntary actions: Role of the rostral cingulate zone

et al. 2016

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“…Our findings support a rational account for human probabilistic reasoning and a unifying perspective that connects the implicit learning without instruction with the generalization under structured and expressive rules. grounding for the pervasive gambler's fallacy bias in human judgments of random processes, where people systematically discount repetitions and emphasize alternations (9,10).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 is maximized when H = T. That is, governed by the belief function f ðH; TÞ, the optimal solution to generating a random sequence is to always seek a balance between the numbers of heads and tails (10). Based on this belief function, Griffiths and Tenenbaum (8) proposed a Bayesian model of random sequence production.…”

Section: Bayesian Models Of Random Sequence Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It captures the idea that when generating random sequences, people are seeking a balance between heads and tails and between repetitions and alternations not only in the global sequence, but also in the local subsequences (10). Apparently, the extent to which this balance is adjusted is determined by the free scaling parameter λ in Eqs.…”

Section: Bayesian Models Of Random Sequence Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Latent structure in random sequences drives neural learning toward a rational bias

Sun

O’Reilly

Bhattacharyya

et al. 2015

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

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People generally fail to produce random sequences by overusing alternating patterns and avoiding repeating ones-the gambler's fallacy bias. We can explain the neural basis of this bias in terms of a biologically motivated neural model that learns from errors in predicting what will happen next. Through mere exposure to random sequences over time, the model naturally develops a representation that is biased toward alternation, because of its sensitivity to some surprisingly rich statistical structure that emerges in these random sequences. Furthermore, the model directly produces the best-fitting bias-gain parameter for an existing Bayesian model, by which we obtain an accurate fit to the human data in random sequence production. These results show that our seemingly irrational, biased view of randomness can be understood instead as the perfectly reasonable response of an effective learning mechanism to subtle statistical structure embedded in random sequences.gambler's fallacy | waiting time | neural network | temporal integration | Bayesian inference P eople are prone to search for patterns in sequences of events, even when the sequences are completely random. In a famous game of roulette at the Monte Carlo casino in 1913, black repeated a record 26 times-people began extreme betting on red after about 15 repetitions (1). The gambler's fallacy-a belief that chance is a self-correcting process where a deviation in one direction would induce a deviation in the opposite directionhas been deemed a misperception of random sequences (2). For decades, this fallacy is thought to have originated from the "representativeness bias," in which a sequence of events generated by a random process is expected to represent the essential characteristics of that process even when the sequence is short (3).However, there is a surprising amount of systematic structure lurking within random sequences. For example, in the classic case of tossing a fair coin, where the probability of each outcome (heads or tails) is exactly 0.5 on every single trial, one would naturally assume that there is no possibility for some kind of interesting structure to emerge, given such a simple and desolate form of randomness. And yet, if one records the average amount of time for a pattern to first occur in a sequence (i.e., the waiting time statistic), it is significantly longer for a repetition (head-head HH or tail-tail TT, six tosses) than for an alternation (HT or TH, four tosses). This is despite the fact that on average, repetitions and alternations are equally probable (occurring once in every four tosses, i.e., the same mean time statistic). For both of these facts to be true, it must be that repetitions are more bunched together over time-they come in bursts, with greater spacing between, compared with alternations. Intuitively, this difference comes from the fact that repetitions can build upon each other (e.g., sequence HHH contains two instances of HH), whereas alternations cannot. Statistically, the mean time and waiting time delineate the m...

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Resistance to coaching in forced‐choice testing

Orthey

Vrij

Meijer

et al. 2018

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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In forced-choice tests (FCTs), examinees are typically presented with questions with two equally plausible answer alternatives, of which only one is correct. The rationale underlying this test is that guilty examinees tend to avoid relevant crime information, producing a nonrandom response pattern. The validity of FCTs is reduced when examinees are informed about this underlying rationale, with coached guilty examinees refraining from avoiding the correct information but trying to provide a random mix of correct and incorrect answers. To detect such intentional randomization, a "runs" test-looking at the distribution of the number of alternations between correct and incorrect answers-has been suggested but with limited success. We designed a runs test based on distinguishing between patterns that look random and patterns that are random. Specifically, we alternated the horizontal presentation (i.e., presentation left or right on the screen) of the correct answer alternative between each trial.As a consequence, guilty examinees were faced with having to choose to randomize either between correct and incorrect answers-leading to chance performance-or between answers presented on the left or right, producing a pattern that "looks" random. As innocent examinees are unaware of the correct answers, they can only randomize between horizontal positions. Results showed that the number of correct items selected distinguished guilty from innocent examinees only when they were not informed about the underlying rationale. In contrast, alternations between correct and incorrect answers did distinguish informed guilty from innocent examinees. Incremental validity of the alternation criterion and theoretical implications are discussed.

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The production and perception of randomness.

Cited by 205 publications

References 111 publications

Influences of unconscious priming on voluntary actions: Role of the rostral cingulate zone

Influences of unconscious priming on voluntary actions: Role of the rostral cingulate zone

Latent structure in random sequences drives neural learning toward a rational bias

Resistance to coaching in forced‐choice testing

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