bioRxiv · 10.1101/2024.11.11.622934
Indecision and recency-weighted evidence integration in non-clinical and clinical settings
Abstract
Biases in information gathering are common in the general population and can reach pathological extremes in paralysing indecisiveness, as in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Here, we adopt a new perspective on information gathering and demonstrate an information integration bias where most recent information is over-weighted by means of evidence strength updates ({Delta}ES). In a large, crowd-sourced sample (N=5,237), we find reduced {Delta}ES-weighting drives indecisiveness along an OC spectrum. We replicate the attenuated {Delta}ES- weighting in a second lab-based study (N=105) that includes a transdiagnostic OC spectrum encompassing OCD and generalised anxiety patients. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we trace {Delta}ES signals to a late neural signal peaking around 920 ms. Critically, high-OC participants show an attenuated neural {Delta}ES signal in medio-frontal areas while other decision- relevant processes remain intact. Our findings establish biased information-weighting as a key driver of information gathering, where attenuated {Delta}ES can lead to indecisiveness across an OC spectrum.
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del Rio, M., Trudel, N., Prabhu, G., Hunt, L. T., Moutoussis, M., Dolan, R. J., Hauser, T. U.. 2024-11-13. Indecision and recency-weighted evidence integration in non-clinical and clinical settings. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.11.11.622934
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