December 23, 2024

Serial Dependence Bias: Guessing Coins’ Value Quickly Demonstrates Cognitive Bias Mechanism

Research study participants were asked to think the number, or the worth of coins displayed on screen for half a 2nd. Since thinking the worth of the coins needed some cognitive processing, scientists had the ability to check the results of serial reliance predisposition for perceptual and cognitive processing individually. Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University
Does serial reliance bias affect greater- or lower-order processing of perception?
Serial dependence is a predisposition impacting affective experience, in which what you presently perceive tends to be biased toward what you have perceived immediately in the past. This phenomenon has been observed in tasks using various stimuli, including tilt understanding, number understanding, and movement understanding, but it was not understood if this bias took place during sensory perception or cognition.
A research study team performed experiments on the serial dependence of number understanding utilizing coins, to see if serial perception bias took place in lower-order affective or higher-order perceptual and cognitive processing. The team was led by Professor Shogo Makioka from the Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Sustainable System Sciences.
Experiments were conducted in which in between 8 to 32 Japanese coins of three types– silver one yen, gold five yen, and copper 10 yen– were shown on screen for half a second. In the first experiment, the 24 individuals guessed the total number of coins that appeared on the screen 250 times; in the second experiment, participants saw coins appear on the screen, however guessed the total worth of the cash displayed 250 times.

Study individuals were asked to think the number, or the value of coins displayed on screen for half a second. Because thinking the value of the coins needed some cognitive processing, scientists were able to check the impacts of serial reliance bias for affective and cognitive processing individually. Serial dependence was verified for both tasks: it was discovered that a participants last guess, not the coins that they had actually just seen for half a 2nd, had the greatest result on how they responded to.

Serial reliance was validated for both tasks: it was found that an individuals last guess, not the coins that they had actually just seen for half a second, had the best result on how they answered. These results show that higher-order cognitive processing has a greater influence on the event of serial dependence. These findings were released recently in the journal Scientific Reports.
” The results of this study reveal that our affective experiences and our choices themselves influence our next choices, which might work in recording the propensity to misunderstand and misjudge in our everyday lives,” discussed Professor Makioka. “We believe that research advances on biases– such as the serial reliance bias– should be applied to how information is presented and can be utilized to create an environment that decreases human mistake.”
Reference: “Serial dependence in quotes of the monetary worth of coins” by Yukihiro Morimoto and Shogo Makioka, 23 November 2022, Scientific Reports.DOI: 10.1038/ s41598-022-24236-z.