Context effects on probability estimation

PLoS Biol. 2020 Mar 5;18(3):e3000634. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000634. eCollection 2020 Mar.

Abstract

Many decisions rely on how we evaluate potential outcomes and estimate their corresponding probabilities of occurrence. Outcome evaluation is subjective because it requires consulting internal preferences and is sensitive to context. In contrast, probability estimation requires extracting statistics from the environment and therefore imposes unique challenges to the decision maker. Here, we show that probability estimation, like outcome evaluation, is subject to context effects that bias probability estimates away from other events present in the same context. However, unlike valuation, these context effects appeared to be scaled by estimated uncertainty, which is largest at intermediate probabilities. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) imaging showed that patterns of multivoxel activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), and intraparietal sulcus (IPS) predicted individual differences in context effects on probability estimates. These results establish VMPFC as the neurocomputational substrate shared between valuation and probability estimation and highlight the additional involvement of dACC and IPS that can be uniquely attributed to probability estimation. Because probability estimation is a required component of computational accounts from sensory inference to higher cognition, the context effects found here may affect a wide array of cognitive computations.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Behavioral Research / methods
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Decision Making*
  • Female
  • Gyrus Cinguli / physiology
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Male
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Nontherapeutic Human Experimentation
  • Oxygen / blood
  • Parietal Lobe / physiology
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Prefrontal Cortex / physiology
  • Probability*
  • Reward

Substances

  • Oxygen

Grants and funding

SWW acknowledges the generous support of Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan (most.gov.tw) 101-2628-H-010-001-MY4, 104-2410-H-010-002-MY3, 107-2410-H-010-003-MY3, 108-2410-H-010-012-MY3, Ministry of Education in Taiwan: Featured Areas Research Center Program within the Framework of Higher Education Sprout Project (https://sprout.moe.edu.tw/SproutWeb) (grant number: 108BRC-B602) to Brain Research Center at National Yang-Ming University (https://brc.ym.edu.tw/). JLG acknowledges the generous support of Research to Prevent Blindness and Lions Club International Foundation (https://www.rpbusa.org/rpb/low-vision/) and Hellman Fellows Fund (http://www.hellmanfellows.org/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.