Projects per year
Abstract
When making decisions in everyday life, we often rely on an internally generated sense of confidence to help us revise and direct future behaviours. For instance, confidence directly informs whether further information should be sought prior to commitment to a final decision. Many studies have shown that aging and both clinical and sub-clinical symptoms of psychopathology are associated with systematic alterations in confidence. However, it remains unknown whether these confidence distortions influence information-seeking behaviour. We investigated this question in a large general population sample (N = 908). Participants completed a battery of psychiatric symptom questionnaires and performed a perceptual decision-making task with confidence ratings in which they were offered the option to seek helpful information (at a cost) before committing to a final decision. Replicating previous findings, an 'anxious-depression' (AD) symptom dimension was associated with systematically low confidence, despite no detriment in objective task accuracy. Conversely, a 'compulsive behaviour and intrusive thoughts' (CIT) dimension was associated with impaired task accuracy but paradoxical over-confidence. However, neither symptom dimension was significantly associated with an increased or decreased tendency to seek information. Hence, participants scoring highly for AD or CIT did not use the option to information seek any more than average to either increase their confidence (AD) or improve the accuracy of their decisions (CIT). In contrast, older age was associated with impaired accuracy and decreased confidence initially, but increased information seeking behaviour mediated increases in both accuracy and confidence for final decisions. Hence, older adults used the information seeking option to overcome initial deficits in objective performance and to increase their confidence accordingly. The results show an appropriate use of information seeking to overcome perceptual deficits and low confidence in healthy aging which was not present in transdiagnostic psychopathology.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 353 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Translational Psychiatry |
Volume | 14 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 3 Sept 2024 |
Keywords
- Humans
- Female
- Male
- Information Seeking Behavior
- Middle Aged
- Adult
- Aged
- Uncertainty
- Healthy Aging/psychology
- Young Adult
- Decision Making
- Anxiety/psychology
- Depression/psychology
- Adolescent
- Aged, 80 and over
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Psychiatry and Mental health
- Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
- Biological Psychiatry
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Dive into the research topics of 'Information search under uncertainty across transdiagnostic psychopathology and healthy ageing'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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How Confident Are You Now? Identifyng Predictors of Suboptimal Metacognitive Decisions in the General Population
Benwell, C. (Investigator)
13/11/19 → 12/01/24
Project: Research
Datasets
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Information search under uncertainty across transdiagnostic psychopathology and healthy ageing
Benwell, C. (Creator), Ince, R. A. A. (Creator) & Mohr, G. (Creator), University of Dundee, 22 Aug 2024
Dataset