Kvam Peter D, Sokratous Konstantina, Fitch Anderson K
Department of Psychology, University of Florida.
Psychol Rev. 2025 Apr;132(3):528-555. doi: 10.1037/rev0000500. Epub 2024 Sep 19.
Dynamic models of choice typically describe the decision-making process in terms of the degree or balance of support for available response options. However, these alternative-specific representations of support are liable to fail when the available options change during the course of a decision. We suggest that people may use alternative-general representations, where stimulus feature information-rather than option-specific support-is accumulated over time and mapped onto support for available options as they appear. We tested alternative-specific and alternative-general models of choice in two perceptual experiments where the available options could change during a trial. In the first study, we showed that changing the choice options partway through a trial resulted in no substantial difference in performance relative to a condition where the final options were always onscreen. This was supported by a quantitative model comparison that strongly favored an alternative-general (geometric) model over two alternative-specific models (diffusion and racing accumulator models). In the second study, the stimulus primed specific unavailable responses to test whether irrelevant support for unavailable options was integrated into the decision process. This study elicited a pattern of accuracy that could not have occurred unless participants accumulated support for options that were not yet available. Together, these experiments and modeling results indicate that the majority of participants rely on alternative-general representations of evidence during dynamic decisions among options that can change over time. Future work on decision behavior and its neural antecedents should explore the predictions of these alternative-general theories of choice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
选择的动态模型通常根据对可用反应选项的支持程度或平衡来描述决策过程。然而，当可用选项在决策过程中发生变化时，这些特定于选项的支持表示可能会失效。我们认为，人们可能会使用通用的选项表示方式，即随着时间的推移积累刺激特征信息（而不是特定于选项的支持），并在可用选项出现时将其映射到对这些选项的支持上。我们在两个知觉实验中测试了特定于选项和通用的选项选择模型，在这些实验中，可用选项在试验过程中可能会发生变化。在第一项研究中，我们发现，在试验中途改变选择选项与最终选项始终显示在屏幕上的情况相比，在表现上没有实质性差异。这得到了定量模型比较的支持，该比较强烈支持通用（几何）模型，而不是两个特定于选项的模型（扩散和竞争累加器模型）。在第二项研究中，刺激引发了对特定不可用反应的准备，以测试对不可用选项的无关支持是否被整合到决策过程中。这项研究得出了一种准确率模式，除非参与者积累了对尚未可用选项的支持，否则这种模式不可能出现。总之，这些实验和建模结果表明，在选项随时间变化的动态决策中，大多数参与者依赖于通用的证据表示方式。未来关于决策行为及其神经基础的研究应该探索这些通用选择理论的预测。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》（c）2025美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
