Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale, Université de Recherche Paris Sciences et Lettres, Paris, France.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Mar;376(1819):20190665. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0665. Epub 2021 Jan 11.
The experimental investigation of decision-making in humans relies on two distinct types of paradigms, involving either description- or experience-based choices. In description-based paradigms, decision variables (i.e. payoffs and probabilities) are explicitly communicated by means of symbols. In experience-based paradigms decision variables are learnt from trial-by-trial feedback. In the decision-making literature, 'description-experience gap' refers to the fact that different biases are observed in the two experimental paradigms. Remarkably, well-documented biases of description-based choices, such as under-weighting of rare events and loss aversion, do not apply to experience-based decisions. Here, we argue that the description-experience gap represents a major challenge, not only to current decision theories, but also to the neuroeconomics research framework, which relies heavily on the translation of neurophysiological findings between human and non-human primate research. In fact, most non-human primate neurophysiological research relies on behavioural designs that share features of both description- and experience-based choices. As a consequence, it is unclear whether the neural mechanisms built from non-human primate electrophysiology should be linked to description-based or experience-based decision-making processes. The picture is further complicated by additional methodological gaps between human and non-human primate neuroscience research. After analysing these methodological challenges, we conclude proposing new lines of research to address them. This article is part of the theme issue 'Existence and prevalence of economic behaviours among non-human primates'.
人类决策的实验研究依赖于两种截然不同的范式，涉及基于描述或基于经验的选择。在基于描述的范式中，决策变量（即收益和概率）通过符号明确传达。在基于经验的范式中，决策变量是通过试错反馈学习的。在决策文献中，“描述-经验差距”是指在这两种实验范式中观察到不同偏见的事实。值得注意的是，基于描述的选择存在有据可查的偏见，例如对稀有事件的低估和损失厌恶，这些偏见不适用于基于经验的决策。在这里，我们认为描述-经验差距不仅是当前决策理论的主要挑战，也是神经经济学研究框架的主要挑战，该框架严重依赖于人类和非人类灵长类动物研究之间的神经生理学发现的翻译。事实上，大多数非人类灵长类动物神经生理学研究依赖于行为设计，这些设计具有基于描述和基于经验的选择的特征。因此，尚不清楚从非人类灵长类动物电生理学中构建的神经机制应该与基于描述的还是基于经验的决策过程相关联。人类和非人类灵长类动物神经科学研究之间的其他方法学差距使情况更加复杂。在分析了这些方法学挑战之后，我们得出结论，提出了新的研究路线来解决这些挑战。本文是主题为“非人类灵长类动物中存在和普遍存在经济行为”的特刊的一部分。
