Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33423626›Full record

ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021

The description-experience gap: a challenge for the neuroeconomics of decision-making under uncertainty.

Basile Garcia, Fabien Cerrotti, Stefano Palminteri

Abstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
22citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

22 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
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  4. Social inequity disrupts reward-based learning.Communications psychology · 2025
    Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Predecisional information search adaptively reduces three types of uncertainty.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
    Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Decision neuroscience and neuroeconomics: Recent progress and ongoing challenges.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science · 2022
    Review
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Impact of internal and external factors on prosocial choices in rhesus macaques.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Article
  20. Economic behaviours among non-human primates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Basile GarciaLaboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale, Université de Recherche Paris Sciences et Lettres, Paris, France.
Fabien CerrottiLaboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale, Université de Recherche Paris Sciences et Lettres, Paris, France.
Stefano PalminteriLaboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale, Université de Recherche Paris Sciences et Lettres, Paris, France.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The experimental investigation of decision-making in humans relies on two distinct types of paradigms, involving either description- or experience-based choices. In description-based paradigms, decision variables (i.e. payoffs and probabilities) are explicitly communicated by means of symbols. In experience-based paradigms decision variables are learnt from trial-by-trial feedback. In the decision-making literature, 'description-experience gap' refers to the fact that different biases are observed in the two experimental paradigms. Remarkably, well-documented biases of description-based choices, such as under-weighting of rare events and loss aversion, do not apply to experience-based decisions. Here, we argue that the description-experience gap represents a major challenge, not only to current decision theories, but also to the neuroeconomics research framework, which relies heavily on the translation of neurophysiological findings between human and non-human primate research. In fact, most non-human primate neurophysiological research relies on behavioural designs that share features of both description- and experience-based choices. As a consequence, it is unclear whether the neural mechanisms built from non-human primate electrophysiology should be linked to description-based or experience-based decision-making processes. The picture is further complicated by additional methodological gaps between human and non-human primate neuroscience research. After analysing these methodological challenges, we conclude proposing new lines of research to address them. This article is part of the theme issue 'Existence and prevalence of economic behaviours among non-human primates'.

Indexed as

Decision MakingUncertaintyAnimalsChoice BehaviorPrimatesdecision-makingdescription–experience gapmacaqueneuroeconomicsreinforcement learningrisk

Identifiers

PMID33423626
PMCPMC7815421

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

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.