ArticleNeuron2018
Counterfactual Reasoning Underlies the Learning of Priors in Decision Making.
Article in Neuron, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed.
- Refining mechanistic models of hallucinations for enhanced translatability.Translational psychiatry · 2025Review
- Individual differences in decision-making shape how mesolimbic dopamine regulates choice confidence and change-of-mind.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Computational basis of hierarchical and counterfactual information processing.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Delusional Unreality and Predictive Processing.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2025Article
- Empirically Integrating the Evidence for Different Predictive Coding Components Using Auditory False Perception.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- A population representation of the confidence in a decision in the parietal cortex.Cell reports · 2025Article
- A corticostriatal learning mechanism linking excess striatal dopamine and auditory hallucinations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A Population Representation of the Confidence in a Decision in the Parietal Cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Value construction through sequential sampling explains serial dependencies in decision making.eLife · 2024Article
- Value construction through sequential sampling explains serial dependencies in decision making.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Confidence ratings do not distinguish imagination from reality.Journal of vision · 2024Article
- Expressions for Bayesian confidence of drift diffusion observers in fluctuating stimuli tasks.Journal of mathematical psychology · 2023Article
- Judging the difficulty of perceptual decisions.eLife · 2023Article
- Long- and short-term history effects in a spiking network model of statistical learning.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Environmental dynamics shape perceptual decision bias.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Consensus Goals in the Field of Visual Metacognition.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2022Article
- Controllability boosts neural and cognitive signatures of changes-of-mind in uncertain environments.eLife · 2022Article
- A confirmation bias in perceptual decision-making due to hierarchical approximate inference.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Representations of uncertainty: where art thou?Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Accurate decisions require knowledge of prior probabilities (e.g., prevalence or base rate), but it is unclear how prior probabilities are learned in the absence of a teacher. We hypothesized that humans could learn base rates from experience making decisions, even without feedback. Participants made difficult decisions about the direction of dynamic random dot motion. Across blocks of 15-42 trials, the base rate favoring left or right varied. Participants were not informed of the base rate or choice accuracy, yet they gradually biased their choices and thereby increased accuracy and confidence in their decisions. They achieved this by updating knowledge of base rate after each decision, using a counterfactual representation of confidence that simulates a neutral prior. The strategy is consistent with Bayesian updating of belief and suggests that humans represent both true confidence, which incorporates the evolving belief of the prior, and counterfactual confidence, which discounts the prior.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.