Confidence in value-based choice

Decisions are never perfect, with confidence in one's choices fluctuating over time. How subjective confidence and valuation of choice options interact at the level of brain and behavior is unknown. Using a dynamic model of the decision process, we show that confidence reflects the evolution of a decision variable over time, explaining the observed relation between confidence, value, accuracy and reaction time. As predicted by our dynamic model, we show that a functional magnetic resonance imaging signal in human ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) reflects both value comparison and confidence in the value comparison process. Crucially, individuals varied in how they related confidence to accuracy, allowing us to show that this introspective ability is predicted by a measure of functional connectivity between vmPFC and rostrolateral prefrontal cortex. Our findings provide a mechanistic link between noise in value comparison and metacognitive awareness of choice, enabling us both to want and to express knowledge of what we want.

• Publication year

  2012

• Venue

  Nature Neuroscience

• Publication date

  2012-12-09

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/nn.3279PMID 23222911PMCID 3786394
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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