Hofmans Lieke, van den Bos Wouter
Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 129b, 1018 WS Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Motivation, Brain and Behaviour Lab, Paris Brain Institute (ICM), Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, 47 bd de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris, France.
Cereb Cortex. 2025 Aug 1;35(8). doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaf251.
Social learning, a hallmark of human behavior, entails integrating other's actions or ideas with one's own. While it can accelerate the learning process by circumventing slow and costly individual trial-and-error learning, its effectiveness depends on knowing when and whose information to use. In this study, we explored how individuals use social information based on their own and others' levels of uncertainty. Participants performed a social information use task in which they could revise their initial estimate after viewing a peer's estimate. Uncertainty was manipulated by varying the amount of information provided before their decision and by manipulating the peer's reported confidence. As expected, adjustments were larger when individuals themselves were less certain and the peer was more confident. Through a combination of Bayesian computational modeling and neuroimaging analyses, we were able to identify regions in the anterior and ventral medial prefrontal cortex where neural activity overlapped in response to lower personal certainty, higher peer confidence, and larger belief updates after viewing the peer's estimate. We discuss how these regions in the medial prefrontal cortex likely serve as a convergence zone for the preparation and execution of integrating certainty estimates.
社会学习是人类行为的一个标志，它需要将他人的行为或想法与自己的行为或想法整合起来。虽然它可以通过规避缓慢且代价高昂的个体试错学习来加速学习过程，但其有效性取决于知道何时以及使用谁的信息。在本研究中，我们探讨了个体如何根据自己和他人的不确定性水平来使用社会信息。参与者执行了一项社会信息使用任务，在该任务中，他们可以在查看同伴的估计后修改自己的初始估计。不确定性是通过在他们做出决定之前改变提供的信息量以及操纵同伴报告的信心来进行操纵的。正如预期的那样，当个体自身的不确定性较低且同伴更有信心时，调整幅度会更大。通过结合贝叶斯计算建模和神经影像学分析，我们能够识别出前额叶内侧前部和腹侧的区域，在查看同伴的估计后，这些区域的神经活动会因较低的个人确定性、较高的同伴信心和较大的信念更新而重叠。我们讨论了前额叶内侧皮质的这些区域如何可能作为整合确定性估计的准备和执行的汇聚区。
