15:00 - 16:30
Submission 334
Cognitive and Cue-Related Determinants for the Existence and Strength of Coherence Shifts
Posterwall-55
Presented by: Sophie Scharf
Sophie ScharfSarah ForstKristin EibachKira Münch
University of Mannheim, Germany
Normative accounts of probabilistic inference assume that cue weights remain fixed during choice. Yet many studies document preference-induced changes in subjective cue weights, so-called coherence shifts, such that the weights of preference-consistent cues increase while those of preference-inconsistent cues decrease. Although coherence shifts appear across various tasks, moderators of their magnitude remain unclear. The model of metacognitive control of decisions (MCD) predicts that deliberation amplifies coherence shifts. Complementing this, we derived cue-level coherence-shift predictions from what is, to our knowledge, the first parallel constraint satisfaction model of decision making (PCS-DM) simulation targeting coherence shifts. The simulation suggests that coherence shifts occur only for cues that discriminate between options and are larger for cues with lower initial subjective validity. Building on these predictions, we test whether cue discriminability, initial subjective validity, and decision mode (intuitive vs. deliberate) modulate coherence shifts. In two experiments, participants choose between vacation locations based on weather forecasts from commonly used weather apps (cues). The subjective validity of four (Exp. 1) or five (Exp. 2) weather-app cues is rated before and after each choice. Coherence shifts are operationalized as the (absolute) difference of the pre-post change in subjective cue validity. Preliminary results indicate the predicted absence of coherence shifts for non-discriminating cues and a negative correlation between absolute coherence shifts and initial cue validity, but no effect of the deliberation manipulation on coherence shifts. This work informs process-level accounts such as PCS-DM and the MCD model of how and when cue weights are reshaped during choice.