Darby Kevin P, Gettleman Jessica N, Dodson Chad S, Sederberg Per B
Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University.
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2025 Mar;154(3):799-828. doi: 10.1037/xge0001680. Epub 2024 Dec 12.
Subjective confidence is an important factor in our decision making, but how confidence arises is a matter of debate. A number of computational models have been proposed that integrate confidence into sequential sampling models of decision making, in which evidence accumulates across time to a threshold. An influential example of this approach is the relative balance of evidence hypothesis, in which confidence is determined by the amount of evidence for the choice that was made compared to the evidence for all possible choices. Here, we modify this approach by mapping distance from a decision threshold to confidence via a sigmoid function. This allows for individual differences in bias toward lower or higher levels of confidence, as well as sensitivity to differences in evidence between choices. We apply several variants of the model to assess potential age differences between young and older adults in source memory decision making in an existing data set (Dodson, Bawa, & Slotnick, 2007). We compare our model to the relative balance of evidence approach, and the results indicate that the sigmoidal method substantially improves model fit. We also consider models in which memory errors can arise from a misrecollection process that involves associating items with the incorrect source, a process that has been proposed to account for age differences in source memory confidence and accuracy, but find no evidence that misrecollection is necessary to account for the results. This work provides a viable model of subjective confidence that is integrated with well-established models of decision making and provides insights into effects of aging on source memory decisions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
主观信心是我们决策过程中的一个重要因素，但信心是如何产生的仍是一个有争议的问题。已经提出了一些计算模型，将信心整合到决策的序列抽样模型中，在该模型中，证据随时间累积到一个阈值。这种方法的一个有影响力的例子是证据相对平衡假说，即信心由已做出的选择的证据量与所有可能选择的证据量相比来决定。在这里，我们通过一个S形函数将与决策阈值的距离映射为信心，从而修改了这种方法。这允许在对较低或较高信心水平的偏向以及对选择之间证据差异的敏感度方面存在个体差异。我们将该模型的几个变体应用于评估现有数据集中年轻人和老年人在源记忆决策中潜在的年龄差异（多德森、巴瓦和斯洛特尼克，2007年）。我们将我们的模型与证据相对平衡方法进行比较，结果表明S形方法显著提高了模型拟合度。我们还考虑了记忆错误可能源于错误回忆过程的模型，该过程涉及将项目与错误的源相关联，有人提出这个过程可以解释源记忆信心和准确性方面的年龄差异，但没有发现证据表明错误回忆是解释这些结果所必需的。这项工作提供了一个可行的主观信心模型，该模型与成熟的决策模型相结合，并深入了解了衰老对源记忆决策的影响。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》（c）2025美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
