title: Selective attention increases choice certainty in human decision making.
abstract: Choice certainty is a probabilistic estimate of past performance and expected outcome. In perceptual decisions the degree of confidence correlates closely with choice accuracy and reaction times, suggesting an intimate relationship to objective performance. Here we show that spatial and feature-based attention increase human subjects' certainty more than accuracy in visual motion discrimination tasks. Our findings demonstrate for the first time a dissociation of choice accuracy and certainty with a significantly stronger influence of voluntary top-down attention on subjective performance measures than on objective performance. These results reveal a so far unknown mechanism of the selection process implemented by attention and suggest a unique biological valence of choice certainty beyond a faithful reflection of the decision process.
authors: Department of Neurology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
authors: Leopold
authors: L
authors: Zizlsperger
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: Sauvigny
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: Haarmeier
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009039:Motion Perception; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D011336:Probability; D011594:Psychometrics; D011930:Reaction Time; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult