A review is presented of the book “Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment,” edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman.

Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

Brains, it has recently been argued, are essentially prediction machines. They are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with top-down expectations or predictions. This is achieved using a hierarchical generative model that aims to minimize prediction error within a bidirectional cascade of cortical processing. Such accounts offer a unifying model of perception and action, illuminate the functional role of attention, and may neatly capture the special contribution of cortical processing to adaptive success. This target article critically examines this "hierarchical prediction machine" approach, concluding that it offers the best clue yet to the shape of a unified science of mind and action. Sections 1 and 2 lay out the key elements and implications of the approach. Section 3 explores a variety of pitfalls and challenges, spanning the evidential, the methodological, and the more properly conceptual. The paper ends (sections 4 and 5) by asking how such approaches might impact our more general vision of mind, experience, and agency.

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Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science

This article concerns the nature of evoked brain responses and the principles underlying their generation. We start with the premise that the sensory brain has evolved to represent or infer the causes of changes in its sensory inputs. The problem of inference is well formulated in statistical terms. The statistical fundaments of inference may therefore afford important constraints on neuronal implementation. By formulating the original ideas of Helmholtz on perception, in terms of modern-day statistical theories, one arrives at a model of perceptual inference and learning that can explain a remarkable range of neurobiological facts. It turns out that the problems of inferring the causes of sensory input (perceptual inference) and learning the relationship between input and cause (perceptual learning) can be resolved using exactly the same principle. Specifically, both inference and learning rest on minimizing the brain’s free energy, as defined in statistical physics. Furthermore, inference and learning can proceed in a biologically plausible fashion. Cortical responses can be seen as the brain’s attempt to minimize the free energy induced by a stimulus and thereby encode the most likely cause of that stimulus. Similarly, learning emerges from changes in synaptic efficacy that minimize the free energy, averaged over all stimuli encountered. The underlying scheme rests on empirical Bayes and hierarchical models of how sensory input is caused. The use of hierarchical models enables the brain to construct prior expectations in a dynamic and context-sensitive fashion. This scheme provides a principled way to understand many aspects of cortical organization and responses. The aim of this article is to encompass many apparently unrelated anatomical, physiological and psychophysical attributes of the brain within a single theoretical perspective. In terms of cortical architectures, the theoretical treatment predicts that sensory cortex should be arranged hierarchically, that connections should be reciprocal and that forward and backward connections should show a functional asymmetry (forward connections are driving, whereas backward connections are both driving and modulatory). In terms of synaptic physiology, it predicts associative plasticity and, for dynamic models, spike-timing-dependent plasticity. In terms of electrophysiology, it accounts for classical and extra classical receptive field effects and long-latency or endogenous components of evoked cortical responses. It predicts the attenuation of responses encoding prediction error with perceptual learning and explains many phenomena such as repetition suppression, mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P300 in electroencephalography. In psychophysical terms, it accounts for the behavioural correlates of these physiological phenomena, for example, priming and global precedence. The final focus of this article is on perceptual learning as measured with the MMN and the implications for empirical studies of coupling among cortical areas using evoked sensory responses.

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A theory of cortical responses

To understand the endogenous components of the event-related brain potential (ERP), we must use data about the components' antecedent conditions to form hypotheses about the information-processing function of the underlying brain activity These hypotheses, in turn, generate testable predictions about the consequences of the component We review the application of this approach to the analysis of the P300 component The amplitude of the P300 is controlled multiplicatively by the subjective probability and the task relevance of the eliciting events, whereas its latency depends on the duration of stimulus evaluation These and other factors suggest that the P300 is a manifestation of activity occurring whenever one's model of the environment must be revised Tests of three predictions based on this “context updating” model are reviewed Verleger's critique is based on a misconstrual of the model as well as a partial and misleading reading of the relevant literature

Is the P300 component a manifestation of context updating

Perhaps the simplest and the most basic qualitative law of probability is the conjunction rule: The probability of a conjunction, P (A&B) cannot exceed the probabilities of its constituents, P (A) and P (B), because the extension (or the possibility set) of the conjunction is included in the extension of its constituents. Judgments under uncertainty, however, are often mediated by intuitive heuristics that are not bound by the conjunction rule. A conjunction can be more representative than one of its constituents, and instances of a specific category can be easier to imagine or to retrieve than instances of a more inclusive category. The representativeness and availability heuristics therefore can make a conjunction appear more probable than one of its constituents. This phenomenon is demonstrated in a variety of contexts including estimation of word frequency, personality judgment, medical prognosis, decision under risk, suspicion of criminal acts, and political forecasting. Systematic violations of the conjunction rule are observed in judgments of lay people and of experts in both between-subjects and within-subjects comparisons. Alternative interpretations of the conjunction fallacy are discussed and attempts to combat it are explored.

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Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment.

Dark brown calf leather cover, 240 x 160 mm, gold stamped on the front and back with the heraldic crest of Pembroke College, Oxford, and gold stamped with the book title on the spine, 874 pages and one page addendum A pocket formed by the back paste down contains five of originally eight folding plates There are pencil notes in English in a few margins The book is volume 9 in the series Allgemeine Encylopaedie der Physik edited by Gustav Karsten (see page facing the title page) Digital images of the missing plates are on a CD held in the Pamphlet and Ephemera filing cabinet under Catalogue number 2924 together with print-outs of the images They were copied courtesy of the BOA Museum Curator, Neil Handley, from a copy of this book in the Library of the the College of Optometrists, London Images of this missing plates are on the Museum iPhoto

Handbuch der physiologischen Optik

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94) was a leading scientist who made important contributions to physiology, psychology, physics, philosophy and early neuroscience. Following his foundational work in ophthalmics during the 1850s, he became Professor of Physiology at Heidelberg and, in 1863, published On the Sensations of Tone. This investigation into the physical theory of music remains a central text for the study of physiological acoustics and aesthetics. In it, Helmholtz applies physics, anatomy and physiology. He explains how tones are built from a base tone with upper partial tones, and his later discussions on consonance and musical scales develop this theory and discuss how the ear perceives these tones. His work on consonance and dissonance was of particular interest to composers and musicologists well into the twentieth century. This English translation, published in 1875 from the third German edition, retains the original's straightforward language, making this classic work accessible to non-specialists.

On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music

Volume 1 Anatomical description of the eye, physiological optics, the dioptrics of the eye. Volume 2 The sensations of vision. Volume 3 The perceptions of vision.

Helmholtz's treatise on physiological optics

sind bisher Integrale der hydrodynamischen Gleichungen fast nur unter der Voraussetzung gesucht worden, dafs die rechtwinkligen Componenten der Geschwindigkeit jedes Wassertheilchens gleich gesetzt werden können den nach den entsprechenden Richtungen genommenen Differentialquotienten einer bestimmten Function, welche wir das Geschwindigkeifspotential nennen wollen. Allerdings hat schon Lagrange*) nachgewiesen, dafs diese Voraussetzung zulässig ist, so oft die Bewegung der Wassermasse unter dem Einflüsse von Kräften entstanden ist und fortgesetzt wird, welche selbst als Differentialquotienten eines Kräflepotentials dargestellt werden können, und dafs auch der Einflufs bewegter fester Körper, welche mit der Flüssigkeit in Berührung kommen, die Gültigkeit jener Voraussetzung nicht abändert. Da nun die meisten mathematisch gut definirbaren Naturkräfte als die Differentialquotienten eines Kräftepotentials dargestellt werden können, so fallen auch bei weitem die meisten mathematisch zu behandelnden Fälle von Flüssigkeitsbewegung in die Zahl derer, bei denen ein Geschwindigkeitspotential existirt. Indessen hat schon Euler **) darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dafs es doch auch Fälle von Flüssigkeitsbewegung giebt, in denen kein Geschwindigkeitspotential existirt, z. B. die Drehung einer Flüssigkeit um eine Axe mit gleicher Winkelgeschwindigkeit aller Theilchen. Zu den Kräften, welche solche Arten von Bewegungen hervorbringen können, gehören magnetische Kräfte, welche auf eine von electrischen Strömen durchlaufene Flüssigkeit wirken, und namentlich die Reibung der Flüssigkeitstheilchen an einander und an festen Körpern. Der Einflufs der Reibung auf Flüssigkeiten konnte bisher noch nicht mathematisch definirt werden, und doch ist derselbe in allen Fällen, wo es sich nicht um unendlich kleine Schwingungen handelt, sehr grofs, und bringt

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz

Papers

Handbuch der physiologischen Optik

On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music

Helmholtz's treatise on physiological optics

Über Integrale der hydrodynamischen Gleichungen, welche den Wirbelbewegungen entsprechen.

On the Sensations of Tone