Optimal Temporal Risk Assessment

Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience

David eFreestone¹  Fuat eBalcı²  Philip eHolmes³  Laura edeSouza³  Patrick eSimen³  Jonathan D Cohen³ 

[1] Brown University;Koç University;Princeton University;

关键词: Decision Making;    Psychophysics;    Risk Assessment;    uncertainty;    interval timing;    optimality;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnint.2011.00056

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Time is an essential feature of most decisions. Keeping track of time is adaptive because the reward earned from decisions frequently depends on the temporal statistics of the environment. Accordingly, evolution appears to have favored a mechanism that predicts intervals in the seconds-to-minutes range with high accuracy on average, but significant variability from trial to trial. Importantly, the subjective sense of time that results is sufficiently imprecise that maximizing rewards can require substantial behavioral adjustments in response to this temporal uncertainty. Reward-maximization in many daily decisions therefore requires optimal temporal risk assessment. Using tasks that entail different decisions and that impose different time constraints on the reward function, we examine temporal risk assessment ability in terms of the degree to which it approaches optimality. We review recent literature and present human and rodent data that strongly support the hypothesis that these animals take normative account of their endogenous timing uncertainty. By incorporating the psychophysics of interval timing into the study of reward maximization, our approach bridges empirical and theoretical gaps between the interval timing and decision making literatures.

【 授权许可】

Unknown