Interaction between mental health symptoms and confidence in human decision-making

Primary Supervisor: Dr Marion Rouault (marion.rouault@gmail.com) Co-supervisors: Dr Valentin Wyart (valentin.wyart@ens.fr) and Dr Valérian Chambon (valerian.chambon@ens.fr) Research Department: Department of Cognitive Studies, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris Type of project: Experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, computational modeling, big data analysis Topic: We study the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying human metacognition, this ability we have to monitor and evaluate our own cognitive capacities. We will investigate how a sense of confidence is built and maintained, and the function role of confidence signals in guiding learning and decision-making. In particular, we are interested in the influence of confidence on exploration decisions, and the relationship between confidence and perceived controllability, that is how much a person subjectively believes that his/her decisions will make a difference on action outcomes. Skills to be taught: This project will involve developing new experimental designs, building on existing tasks in cognitive psychology and computational psychiatry. You will be responsible for collecting (presumably online) data from healthy adult participants. You will have the opportunity to learn advanced statistical tools for behavioral analyses, and possibly to develop and extend computational models that make key predictions to be tested against empirical data.