The modulation of savouring by prediction error and its effects on choice.
When people anticipate uncertain future outcomes, they often prefer to know their fate in advance. Inspired by an idea in behavioral economics that the anticipation of rewards is itself attractive, we hypothesized that this preference of advance information arises because reward prediction errors carried by such information can boost the level of anticipation. We designed new empirical behavioral studies to test this proposal, and confirmed that subjects preferred advance reward information more strongly when they had to wait for rewards for a longer time. We formulated our proposal in a reinforcement-learning model, and we showed that our model could account for a wide range of existing neuronal and behavioral data, without appealing to ambiguous notions such as an explicit value for information. We suggest that such boosted anticipation significantly drives risk-seeking behaviors, most pertinently in gambling.
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Kiyohito
0000-0002-4748-8432
K
Iigaya
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom.|Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London, United Kingdom.
Giles W
GW
Story
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom.|Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London, United Kingdom.
Zeb
Z
Kurth-Nelson
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom.|Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London, United Kingdom.
Raymond J
RJ
Dolan
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Peter
0000-0003-3476-1839
P
Dayan
D059031:Anticipation, Psychological; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D012201:Reward
anticipation; decision-making; human; neuroscience; prediction error; reinforcement-learning; reward; rhesus macaque