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Poster B13 in Poster Session B - Thursday, August 8, 2024, 1:30 – 3:30 pm, Johnson Ice Rink
Choice Stochasticity and Cognitive Imprecision Across Value Tasks
Clara E. Haeffner1, Miguel Barretto-Garcia2, Silvia Lopez-Guzman1 (); 1National Institute of Mental Health, 2Washington University in St. Louis
Modern computational models of decision-making acknowledge that choice behavior reflects a stochastic process. Most models of value-based choice assume that value computation is passed through a stochastic function that converts a linear value comparison into choice probability. Stochasticity is typically treated as a noisy random variable and the focus in many of these studies involves evaluating the individual differences in value preferences or value learning. However, less attention has been devoted to understanding the individual differences in choice stochasticity and whether the degree of individual cognitive imprecision is a trait-level characteristic that transfers across different value-based tasks. Here, we evaluate the intra-individual stability of choice stochasticity across two distinct value tasks: a risky lottery task and a delay discounting task, and interrogate the role of cognitive imprecision in accounting for this relationship. We find that regardless of mathematical form, stochasticity correlates across tasks, but the relationship between stochasticity, risk attitudes, and temporal discounting largely depends on the assumption of the choice function. In contrast, the cognitive imprecision models offer precise predictions on the relationship between stochasticity, risk, and discounting across individuals. Thus, cognitive imprecision may serve as a general mechanism that could plausibly account for individual risk attitudes as well as discounting behaviors.
Keywords: choice stochasticity cognitive imprecision risky decision-making delay discounting