Ashby Nathaniel J S, Konstantinidis Emmanouil, Yechiam Eldad
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel.
University of New South Wales, Australia.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2017 Mar;174:59-67. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.01.010. Epub 2017 Feb 9.
The rate of selecting different options in the decisions-from-feedback paradigm is commonly used to measure preferences resulting from experiential learning. While convergence to a single option increases with experience, some variance in choice remains even when options are static and offer fixed rewards. Employing a decisions-from-feedback paradigm followed by a policy-setting task, we examined whether the observed variance in choice is driven by factors related to the paradigm itself: Continued exploration (e.g., believing options are non-stationary) or exploitation of perceived outcome patterns (i.e., a belief that sequential choices are not independent). Across two studies, participants showed variance in their choices, which was related (i.e., proportional) to the policies they set. In addition, in Study 2, participants' reported under-confidence was associated with the amount of choice variance in later choices and policies. These results suggest that variance in choice is better explained by participants lacking confidence in knowing which option is better, rather than methodological artifacts (i.e., exploration or failures to recognize outcome independence). As such, the current studies provide evidence for the decisions-from-feedback paradigm's validity as a behavioral research method for assessing learned preferences.
在反馈决策范式中选择不同选项的比率通常用于衡量经验学习产生的偏好。虽然随着经验的增加，会趋向于选择单一选项，但即使选项是固定的且提供固定奖励，选择中仍会存在一些差异。采用反馈决策范式后接政策设定任务，我们研究了观察到的选择差异是否由与范式本身相关的因素驱动：持续探索（例如，认为选项是不稳定的）或利用感知到的结果模式（即，认为连续选择不是独立的）。在两项研究中，参与者的选择存在差异，这与他们设定的政策相关（即成比例）。此外，在研究2中，参与者报告的信心不足与后期选择和政策中的选择差异量相关。这些结果表明，选择差异更好的解释是参与者对知道哪个选项更好缺乏信心，而不是方法学假象（即探索或未能认识到结果独立性）。因此，当前研究为反馈决策范式作为评估学习偏好的行为研究方法的有效性提供了证据。
