Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2021 Oct;83(7):3024-3034. doi: 10.3758/s13414-021-02300-6. Epub 2021 Apr 22.
This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the role of noisy cognition in perceptual judgment, focusing on the central tendency effect: the well-known empirical regularity that perceptual judgments are biased towards the center of the stimulus distribution. Based on a formal Bayesian framework, we generate predictions about the relationships between subjective confidence, central tendency, and response variability. Specifically, our model clarifies that lower subjective confidence as a measure of posterior uncertainty about a judgment should predict (i) a lower sensitivity of magnitude estimates to objective stimuli; (ii) a higher sensitivity to the mean of the stimulus distribution; (iii) a stronger central tendency effect at higher stimulus magnitudes; and (iv) higher response variability. To test these predictions, we collect a large-scale experimental data set and additionally re-analyze perceptual judgment data from several previous experiments. Across data sets, subjective confidence is strongly predictive of the central tendency effect and response variability, both correlationally and when we exogenously manipulate the magnitude of sensory noise. Our results are consistent with (but not necessarily uniquely explained by) Bayesian models of confidence and the central tendency.
本文从理论和实证两个方面研究了嘈杂认知在知觉判断中的作用，重点关注中心趋势效应：即知觉判断偏向刺激分布中心的著名经验规律。基于正式的贝叶斯框架，我们对主观置信度、中心趋势和反应变异性之间的关系生成了预测。具体来说，我们的模型阐明，作为判断后验不确定性的度量的较低主观置信度应预测（i）对客观刺激的幅度估计的敏感性较低；（ii）对刺激分布均值的敏感性较高；（iii）在较高刺激幅度下的中心趋势效应更强；以及（iv）更高的反应变异性。为了检验这些预测，我们收集了一个大规模的实验数据集，并进一步重新分析了几个先前实验的知觉判断数据。在数据集之间，主观置信度与中心趋势效应和反应变异性高度相关，并且当我们外生操纵感觉噪声的幅度时，也是如此。我们的结果与置信度和中心趋势的贝叶斯模型一致（但不一定由其唯一解释）。
