Heuristics contribute to sensorimotor decision-making under risk.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychophysics
• Decision Science

Background:

• Psychophysics research suggests sensorimotor decisions, like reaching for rewards, are optimized for maximum gain.
• This implies that such decisions might be immune to cognitive biases and heuristics common in other decision-making domains.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test the hypothesis that incentivized sensorimotor decisions are impervious to cognitive biases.
• To compare the predictive accuracy of optimal versus suboptimal models of visuomotor decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Conducted two experiments comparing human behavior against optimal and heuristic-based computational models.
• Analyzed deviations from optimal strategies in sensorimotor tasks involving potential gains and losses.

Main Results:

• Found significant evidence that participants deviated from optimal strategies.
• Observed excessive loss avoidance even with zero potential loss, and insufficient avoidance when losses outweighed gains.
• A heuristic model provided a better fit to the data than value-maximizing models, even those allowing for nonlinear value distortions.

Conclusions:

• Incentivized sensorimotor decisions are susceptible to cognitive biases and heuristics.
• Visuomotor choices are influenced by the same types of biases observed in economic decision-making tasks.
• Heuristic strategies play a significant role in guiding sensorimotor behavior.