Deciding Not to Decide: Computational and Neural Evidence for Hidden Behavior in Sequential Choice

Understanding the cognitive and neural processes that underlie human decision making requires the successful prediction of how, but also of when, people choose. Sequential sampling models (SSMs) have greatly advanced the decision sciences by assuming decisions to emerge from a bounded evidence accumulation process so that response times (RTs) become predictable. Here, we demonstrate a difficulty of SSMs that occurs when people are not forced to respond at once but are allowed to sample information sequentially: The decision maker might decide to delay the choice and terminate the accumulation process temporarily, a scenario not accounted for by the standard SSM approach. We developed several SSMs for predicting RTs from two independent samples of an electroencephalography (EEG) and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. In these studies, participants bought or rejected fictitious stocks based on sequentially presented cues and were free to respond at any time. Standard SSM implementations did not describe RT distributions adequately. However, by adding a mechanism for postponing decisions to the model we obtained an accurate fit to the data. Time-frequency analysis of EEG data revealed alternating states of de- and increasing oscillatory power in beta-band frequencies (14–30 Hz), indicating that responses were repeatedly prepared and inhibited and thus lending further support for the existence of a decision not to decide. Finally, the extended model accounted for the results of an adapted version of our paradigm in which participants had to press a button for sampling more information. Our results show how computational modeling of decisions and RTs support a deeper understanding of the hidden dynamics in cognition.Author Summary: When decisions are made under uncertainty, we often decide not to choose immediately but to search for more information that reduces the uncertainty. In most psychological experiments, however, participants are forced to choose at once and cognitive models do not account for the possibility of deliberately delaying decisions. By modeling RT distributions in a sequential choice paradigm, we demonstrate that people decide not to decide when given the opportunity to sample more information. Importantly, this explicit decision to wait is distinguishable from an implicit delay in ongoing decisions as it actively inhibits this ongoing process. We then looked at EEG spectral power in the beta-band (frequencies from 14 to 30 Hz), which is known to reflect both the preparation and inhibition of responses. The obtained pattern is consistent with our proposal that participants repeatedly alternated between considering and postponing their decision in the sequential task. In an additional behavioral experiment, we show that our model also predicts RTs of the decision to sample more information. Hence, our combination of cognitive modeling and EEG provides converging evidence for the existence of a decision that is usually not directly observable.