Distinguishing evidence accumulation from choice confidence in neural signatures of perceptual decision making
- 1Trinity College Dublin
Abstract
Human electrophysiology research has identified the centro-parietal positivity (CPP) as an apparent neural correlate of sensory evidence accumulation during perceptual decision-making. The CPP has also been shown to closely scale with subjective confidence. Coupled with the fact of its domain-generality and lack of choice selectivity, this observation raises the possibility that the CPP might in fact trace subjective confidence rather than cumulative evidence, two quantities that are closely correlated in most experiments. To disentangle confidence from cumulative evidence, we used predictive cues with 80% validity to manipulate prior expectations of participants during a contrast discrimination task while recording electroencephalography (EEG). At the time of decision termination, confidence is expected to reach a higher level for validly cued versus invalidly cued choices, whereas the opposite would be expected of a cumulative evidence signal due to biased decision starting points. As expected, valid cues led to faster, more accurate and more confident responses compared to invalid and neutral cues. At the neural level, cues produced systematic increases in preparation of the expected action prior to evidence onset as indexed by premotor mu/beta activity, consistent with cue-biased criterion adjustments. The pre-response CPP amplitude was significantly reduced for validly cued choices and the effect remained even when matching for confidence. Together these findings suggest that the CPP is not a direct read-out of subjective confidence, but an evidence accumulation signal that contributes to both decision formation and confidence estimation.
Related
- Neural latent representation of implicit perceptual decision confidence signatures from brain-wide intracranial EEG
- Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation boosts evidence accumulation during perceptual decision making
- Neural abstraction of evidence accumulation enables flexible multidimensional perceptual decisions
- Concurrent metacognitive evaluation is dissociable from perceptual evidence accumulation in the parietal cortex
- Motor effort biases perceptual decisions through later-stage evidence accumulation rather than early sensory-attentional processing
BibTeX
@misc{monakhovych2026distinguishing,
title = {{Distinguishing evidence accumulation from choice confidence in neural signatures of perceptual decision making}},
author = {D. Monakhovych and J. P. Grogan and S. P. Kelly and R. G. O'Connell},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.29.760356},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.29.760356v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Distinguishing evidence accumulation from choice confidence in neural signatures of perceptual decision making
AU - D. Monakhovych
AU - J. P. Grogan
AU - S. P. Kelly
AU - R. G. O'Connell
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/29
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.29.760356
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.29.760356v1
AB - Human electrophysiology research has identified the centro-parietal positivity (CPP) as an apparent neural correlate of sensory evidence accumulation during perceptual decision-making. The CPP has also been shown to closely scale with subjective confidence. Coupled with the fact of its domain-generality and lack of choice selectivity, this observation raises the possibility that the CPP might in fact trace subjective confidence rather than cumulative evidence, two quantities that are closely correlated in most experiments. To disentangle confidence from cumulative evidence, we used predictive cues with 80% validity to manipulate prior expectations of participants during a contrast discrimination task while recording electroencephalography (EEG). At the time of decision termination, confidence is expected to reach a higher level for validly cued versus invalidly cued choices, whereas the opposite would be expected of a cumulative evidence signal due to biased decision starting points. As expected, valid cues led to faster, more accurate and more confident responses compared to invalid and neutral cues. At the neural level, cues produced systematic increases in preparation of the expected action prior to evidence onset as indexed by premotor mu/beta activity, consistent with cue-biased criterion adjustments. The pre-response CPP amplitude was significantly reduced for validly cued choices and the effect remained even when matching for confidence. Together these findings suggest that the CPP is not a direct read-out of subjective confidence, but an evidence accumulation signal that contributes to both decision formation and confidence estimation.
ER -