Criterion Learning in a Deferred Decision-Making Task

In a deferred decision task, the decision maker is given an opportunity to purchase information about an uncertain state of nature before choosing a final course of action. After observing each piece of information, the decision maker may stop and choose a final course of action or defer and purchase more information. The stopping criterion is defined as the amount of evidence required to make the final decision. The purpose of the present research was to investigate how individuals learn to improve their stopping criterion based on outcome feedback. Two groups of subjects were given 375 trials of training, each group receiving different payoff and information cost conditions. A substantial training effect was observed: Initially subjects purchased an insufficient amount of information, but as training progressed they learned to purchase more information. This learning effect was explained by an error-correction learning model which assumes that the stopping criterion increases following incorrect and decreases following correct final decisions.

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