ArticleeLife2021
Trading mental effort for confidence in the metacognitive control of value-based decision-making.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Demand avoidance in value-based choice under risk: A behavioral and pupillometric examination.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Choice-induced preference change under a sequential sampling model framework.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Time Spent Thinking in Online Chess Reflects the Value of Computation.Cognitive science · 2025Article
- The confidence-noise confidence-boost (CNCB) model of confidence rating data.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Meta-Analysis Reveals That Explore-Exploit Decisions are Dissociable by Activation in the Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex, Anterior Insula, and the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Decision makers consider all options in choice triplets.PloS one · 2025Article
- Common neural choice signals can emerge artefactually amid multiple distinct value signals.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Confidence control for efficient behaviour in dynamic environments.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Value Estimation versus Effort Mobilization: A General Dissociation between Ventromedial and Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- The online metacognitive control of decisions.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Interpersonal alignment of neural evidence accumulation to social exchange of confidence.eLife · 2023Article
- Debates on the dorsomedial prefrontal/dorsal anterior cingulate cortex: insights for future research.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2023Review
- Evidence or Confidence: What Is Really Monitored during a Decision?Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2023Review
- The Impact of Item Difficulty on Judgment of Confidence-A Cross-Level Moderated Mediation Model.Journal of Intelligence · 2023Article
- Value certainty and choice confidence are multidimensional constructs that guide decision-making.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Does decision confidence reflect effort?PloS one · 2023Article
- Multivariate analysis differentiates intertemporal choices in both value and cognitive control network.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Neurochronometry of choice-induced preference changes: when do preferences actually change?Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Review
- Neuromodulation of choice-induced preference changes: the tDCS study of cognitive dissonance.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Why do we sometimes opt for actions or items that we do not value the most? Under current neurocomputational theories, such preference reversals are typically interpreted in terms of errors that arise from the unreliable signaling of value to brain decision systems. But, an alternative explanation is that people may change their mind because they are reassessing the value of alternative options while pondering the decision. So, why do we carefully ponder some decisions, but not others? In this work, we derive a computational model of the metacognitive control of decisions or MCD. In brief, we assume that fast and automatic processes first provide initial (and largely uncertain) representations of options' values, yielding prior estimates of decision difficulty. These uncertain value representations are then refined by deploying cognitive (e.g., attentional, mnesic) resources, the allocation of which is controlled by an effort-confidence tradeoff. Importantly, the anticipated benefit of allocating resources varies in a decision-by-decision manner according to the prior estimate of decision difficulty. The ensuing MCD model predicts response time, subjective feeling of effort, choice confidence, changes of mind, as well as choice-induced preference change and certainty gain. We test these predictions in a systematic manner, using a dedicated behavioral paradigm. Our results provide a quantitative link between mental effort, choice confidence, and preference reversals, which could inform interpretations of related neuroimaging findings.
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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.