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SUMMARY:Computational Neuroscience Journal Club - Ronald van den Berg\, Un
 iversity of Cambridge
DTSTART:20140225T160000Z
DTEND:20140225T170000Z
UID:TALK51171@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Guillaume Hennequin
DESCRIPTION:Ronald van den Berg will cover:\n\nThe Irrationality of Catego
 rical Perception\nStephen M. Fleming\, Laurence T. Maloney\, and Nathaniel
  D. Daw\nThe Journal of Neuroscience (2013)\nhttp://www.jneurosci.org/cont
 ent/33/49/19060.abstract\n\nABSTRACT:\nPerception is often categorical: th
 e perceptual system selects one interpretation of a stimulus even when evi
 dence in favor of other interpretations is appreciable. Such categorizatio
 n is potentially in conflict with normative decision theory\, which mandat
 es that the utility of various courses of action should depend on the prob
 abilities of all possible states of the world\, not just that of the one p
 erceived. If these probabilities are lost as a result of categorization\, 
 choice will be suboptimal. Here we test for such irrationality in a task t
 hat requires human observers to combine perceptual evidence with the uncer
 tain consequences of action. Observers made rapid pointing movements to ta
 rgets on a touch screen\, with rewards determined by perceptual and motor 
 uncertainty. Across both visual and auditory decision tasks\, observers co
 nsistently placed too much weight on perceptual uncertainty relative to ac
 tion uncertainty. We show that this suboptimality can be explained as a co
 nsequence of categorical perception. Our findings indicate that normative 
 decision making may be fundamentally constrained by the architecture of th
 e perceptual system.
LOCATION:Cambridge University Engineering Department\, CBL Rm #438 (http:/
 /learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Directions)
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