Our guest this week at the SWE colloquium is Christopher Summerfield from Oxford University. Christopher studies both perceptual and value-based decision making and combines mathematical modeling with neuroscientific approaches. Here are the title and abstract of his talk:

Optimality and “irrationality” in human decision making

Humans make “near-optimal” category judgments about noisy sensory stimuli, but on cognitive tasks they often exhibit systematic biases that fail to maximize economic outcomes. In my talk, I will discuss why. I will argue that because the “ideal” observer framework considers only noise that arises during sensory encoding, it frequently misspecifies the decision policy that will maximize rewards. When we also consider “late” noise (that arising during information integration) cognitive biases can often be reframed as efficient, reward-maximizing policies. I will discuss with reference to data and modeling from tasks involving perceptual averaging, transitive choices and decoy effects in multialternative choices.