ArticleNature human behaviour2022
Efficient coding of numbers explains decision bias and noise.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Identifiability of Bayesian models of perception.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Fast efficient coding and sensory adaptation in gain-adaptive recurrent networks.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Distilling noise characteristics and prior expectations in multisensory causal inference.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Endogenous precision of the number sense.eLife · 2026Article
- Shared cognitive biases influence numerical judgments in macaques and crows.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Bayesian estimation yields anti-Weber variability.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Economic Consequences of Numerical Adaptation.Psychological science · 2025Article
- The impact of distribution properties on sampling behavior.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Individual differences in information demand have a low dimensional structure predicted by some curiosity traits.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Integrated Perceptual Decisions Rely on Parallel Evidence Accumulation.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- A unifying theory explains seemingly contradictory biases in perceptual estimation.Nature neuroscience · 2024Article
- Motor "laziness" constrains fixation selection in real-world tasks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- The Future of Decisions From Experience: Connecting Real-World Decision Problems to Cognitive Processes.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- A boundedly rational model for category learning.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Prior Expectations in Visual Speed Perception Predict Encoding Characteristics of Neurons in Area MT.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Humans differentially weight different stimuli in averaging tasks, which has been interpreted as reflecting encoding bias. We examine the alternative hypothesis that stimuli are encoded with noise and then optimally decoded. Under a model of efficient coding, the amount of noise should vary across stimuli and depend on statistics of the stimuli. We investigate these predictions through a task in which the participants are asked to compare the averages of two series of numbers, each sampled from a prior distribution that varies across blocks of trials. The participants encode numbers with a bias and a noise that both depend on the number. Infrequently occurring numbers are encoded with more noise. We show how an efficient-coding, Bayesian-decoding model accounts for these patterns and best captures the participants' behaviour. Finally, our results suggest that Wei and Stocker's "law of human perception", which relates the bias and variability of sensory estimates, also applies to number cognition.
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