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Challenging the fixed-criterion model of perceptual decision-making

Perceptual decision-making is often conceptualized as the process of comparing an internal decision variable to a categorical boundary or criterion. How the mind sets such a criterion has been studied from at least two perspectives. One idea is that the criterion is a fixed quantity. In work on subj...

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Autores principales: Lee, Jennifer Laura, Denison, Rachel, Ma, Wei Ji
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10118309/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37089450
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nc/niad010
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author Lee, Jennifer Laura
Denison, Rachel
Ma, Wei Ji
author_facet Lee, Jennifer Laura
Denison, Rachel
Ma, Wei Ji
author_sort Lee, Jennifer Laura
collection PubMed
description Perceptual decision-making is often conceptualized as the process of comparing an internal decision variable to a categorical boundary or criterion. How the mind sets such a criterion has been studied from at least two perspectives. One idea is that the criterion is a fixed quantity. In work on subjective phenomenology, the notion of a fixed criterion has been proposed to explain a phenomenon called “subjective inflation”—a form of metacognitive mismatch in which observers overestimate the quality of their sensory representation in the periphery or at unattended locations. A contrasting view emerging from studies of perceptual decision-making is that the criterion adjusts to the level sensory uncertainty and is thus sensitive to variations in attention. Here, we mathematically demonstrate that previous empirical findings supporting subjective inflation are consistent with either a fixed or a flexible decision criterion. We further lay out specific task properties that are necessary to make inferences about the flexibility of the criterion: (i) a clear mapping from decision variable space to stimulus feature space and (ii) an incentive for observers to adjust their decision criterion as uncertainty changes. Recent work satisfying these requirements has demonstrated that decision criteria flexibly adjust according to uncertainty. We conclude that the fixed-criterion model of subjective inflation is poorly tenable.
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spelling pubmed-101183092023-04-21 Challenging the fixed-criterion model of perceptual decision-making Lee, Jennifer Laura Denison, Rachel Ma, Wei Ji Neurosci Conscious Research Article Perceptual decision-making is often conceptualized as the process of comparing an internal decision variable to a categorical boundary or criterion. How the mind sets such a criterion has been studied from at least two perspectives. One idea is that the criterion is a fixed quantity. In work on subjective phenomenology, the notion of a fixed criterion has been proposed to explain a phenomenon called “subjective inflation”—a form of metacognitive mismatch in which observers overestimate the quality of their sensory representation in the periphery or at unattended locations. A contrasting view emerging from studies of perceptual decision-making is that the criterion adjusts to the level sensory uncertainty and is thus sensitive to variations in attention. Here, we mathematically demonstrate that previous empirical findings supporting subjective inflation are consistent with either a fixed or a flexible decision criterion. We further lay out specific task properties that are necessary to make inferences about the flexibility of the criterion: (i) a clear mapping from decision variable space to stimulus feature space and (ii) an incentive for observers to adjust their decision criterion as uncertainty changes. Recent work satisfying these requirements has demonstrated that decision criteria flexibly adjust according to uncertainty. We conclude that the fixed-criterion model of subjective inflation is poorly tenable. Oxford University Press 2023-04-20 /pmc/articles/PMC10118309/ /pubmed/37089450 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nc/niad010 Text en © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lee, Jennifer Laura
Denison, Rachel
Ma, Wei Ji
Challenging the fixed-criterion model of perceptual decision-making
title Challenging the fixed-criterion model of perceptual decision-making
title_full Challenging the fixed-criterion model of perceptual decision-making
title_fullStr Challenging the fixed-criterion model of perceptual decision-making
title_full_unstemmed Challenging the fixed-criterion model of perceptual decision-making
title_short Challenging the fixed-criterion model of perceptual decision-making
title_sort challenging the fixed-criterion model of perceptual decision-making
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10118309/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37089450
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nc/niad010
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