Response Bias Reflects Individual Differences in Sensory Encoding.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Decision Making
• Sensory Perception

Background:

• Human decision-making exhibits significant biases, even in simple tasks.
• The origins of these decision-making biases are not fully understood.
• Existing research has not fully explored individual differences in sensory encoding as a source of bias.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate individual differences in sensory encoding variability as a source of response bias.
• To determine if response bias reflects subject-to-subject differences in the variance of internal-evidence distributions.
• To test if response bias aligns with optimal strategies based on individual sensory variability.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of data from three distinct two-choice tasks.
• Participant sample sizes: 443, 443, and 498.
• Examination of the relationship between response bias and individual internal-evidence variability.

Main Results:

• Response bias consistently shifted towards the optimal criterion for each subject.
• This optimal criterion was determined by each individual's unique internal-evidence variability.
• Findings were consistent across all three tested tasks.

Conclusions:

• Individual differences in sensory encoding significantly contribute to response biases.
• Response biases can be partly explained by normative strategies adapting to sensory variability.
• This study highlights a previously unappreciated link between sensory processing and decision-making biases.