Contributed Talk Sessions | Poster Sessions | All Posters | Search Papers

Poster Session B: Wednesday, August 13, 1:00 – 4:00 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

Mouse-tracking Reveals Individual Differences in the Dynamics of Belief Updating Under Volatility

Aurora Katharina Delz¹, Seán Commins, Peter R. Murphy¹; ¹National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Presenter: Aurora Katharina Delz

Decision-making under uncertainty can require dynamic updating of beliefs about the state of the world over time. While previous work has often used two-alternative forced choice tasks to investigate this process, here we introduce a novel mouse-tracking paradigm that tracks belief updating in real time . Participants (N=30) adapted their belief updating across environments with low and high levels of volatility in keeping with a normative model employing a non-linear form of evidence accumulation, and exhibited slow-timescale belief updating dynamics that substantially lagged those observed on a simple sensory-motor task with matched motor requirements. Interrogation of single-subject belief dynamics also revealed marked individual differences: while some participants produced a highly-resolved range of reported beliefs consistent with the normative model, others exhibited strong clustering of beliefs suggestive of a more limited set of categorical commitment states. These findings highlight the sensitivity of mouse-tracking to otherwise hidden individual differences in belief updating, showcasing a novel tool for dissecting computational and neural mechanisms of this key cognitive function

Topic Area: Brain Networks & Neural Dynamics

Extended Abstract: Full Text PDF