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Title: Children's Sensitivity to Cost and Reward in Decision Making across Distinct Domains of Probability, Effort, and Delay: Reward and Cost Sensitivity in Decision Making
NSF-PAR ID:
10039842
Author(s) / Creator(s):
 ;  ;  ;  
Publisher / Repository:
Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
Volume:
31
Issue:
1
ISSN:
0894-3257
Page Range / eLocation ID:
12 to 24
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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  1. Abstract

    Deficits in decision making are at the heart of many psychiatric diseases, such as substance abuse disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Consequently, rodent models of decision making are germane to understanding the neural mechanisms underlying adaptive choice behavior and how such mechanisms can become compromised in pathological conditions. A critical factor that must be integrated with reward value to ensure optimal decision making is the occurrence of consequences, which can differ based on probability (risk of punishment) and temporal contiguity (delayed punishment). This article will focus on two models of decision making that involve explicit punishment, both of which recapitulate different aspects of consequences during human decision making. We will discuss each behavioral protocol, the parameters to consider when designing an experiment, and finally how such animal models can be utilized in studies of psychiatric disease. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

    Basic Protocol 1: Behavioral training

    Support Protocol: Equipment testing

    Alternate Protocol: Reward discrimination

    Basic Protocol 2: Risky decision‐making task (RDT)

    Basic Protocol 3: Delayed punishment decision‐making task (DPDT)

     
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  2. For decisions made under time pressure, effective decision making based on uncertain or ambiguous evidence requires efficient accumulation of evidence over time, as well as appropriately balancing speed and accuracy, known as the speed/accuracy trade-off. For simple unimodal stimuli, previous studies have shown that human subjects set their speed/accuracy trade-off to maximize reward rate. We extend this analysis to situations in which information is provided by multiple sensory modalities. Analyzing previously collected data (Drugowitsch et al., 2014), we show that human subjects adjust their speed/accuracy trade-off to produce near-optimal reward rates. This trade-off can change rapidly across trials according to the sensory modalities involved, suggesting that it is represented by neural population codes rather than implemented by slow neuronal mechanisms such as gradual changes in synaptic weights. Furthermore, we show that deviations from the optimal speed/accuracy trade-off can be explained by assuming an incomplete gradient-based learning of these trade-offs.

     
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