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ARTICLE OPEN
Information search under uncertainty across transdiagnostic
psychopathology and healthy ageing
Greta Mohr
1
, Robin A. A. Ince
1,3
and Christopher S. Y. Benwell
2,3
✉
© The Author(s) 2024
When making decisions in everyday life, we often rely on an internally generated sense of confidence to help us revise and direct
future behaviours. For instance, confidence directly informs whether further information should be sought prior to commitment to
afinal decision. Many studies have shown that aging and both clinical and sub-clinical symptoms of psychopathology are
associated with systematic alterations in confidence. However, it remains unknown whether these confidence distortions influence
information-seeking behaviour. We investigated this question in a large general population sample (N =908). Participants
completed a battery of psychiatric symptom questionnaires and performed a perceptual decision-making task with confidence
ratings in which they were offered the option to seek helpful information (at a cost) before committing to a final decision.
Replicating previous findings, an ‘anxious-depression’(AD) symptom dimension was associated with systematically low confidence,
despite no detriment in objective task accuracy. Conversely, a ‘compulsive behaviour and intrusive thoughts’(CIT) dimension was
associated with impaired task accuracy but paradoxical over-confidence. However, neither symptom dimension was significantly
associated with an increased or decreased tendency to seek information. Hence, participants scoring highly for AD or CIT did not
use the option to information seek any more than average to either increase their confidence (AD) or improve the accuracy of their
decisions (CIT). In contrast, older age was associated with impaired accuracy and decreased confidence initially, but increased
information seeking behaviour mediated increases in both accuracy and confidence for final decisions. Hence, older adults used the
information seeking option to overcome initial deficits in objective performance and to increase their confidence accordingly. The
results show an appropriate use of information seeking to overcome perceptual deficits and low confidence in healthy aging which
was not present in transdiagnostic psychopathology.
Translational Psychiatry (2024) 14:353 ; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-024-03065-w
INTRODUCTION
When making decisions in everyday life, we often lack immediate
feedback about whether the decisions we have made are the right
ones. Instead, we must rely on an internally generated sense of
confidence to help us revise decisions and direct future
behaviours [1,2]. Subjective confidence provides an internal
evaluative signal indicating the probability of a decision being
correct [3,4]. Recent studies have shown that confidence directly
informs whether further information should be sought prior to
commitment to a final decision, with states of low confidence
being associated with increased information-seeking behaviour
independently of initial accuracy [1,5–9]. In other words, when
individuals are unsure of the correctness of a decision, they seek
further information to improve their decision-making [10]. Given
this relationship, how is information-seeking behaviour affected
by distortions of confidence? Systematic under-confidence may
result in increased and inefficient information-seeking, and over-
confidence may result in reduced information-seeking and the
maintenance of incorrect choices, but there is currently little
evidence directly addressing this question.
Numerous studies have shown that both clinical [11–14] and
sub-clinical [13,15–17] psychopathology are associated with
selective alterations in metacognition and subjective confidence.
For example, Rouault et al. [17] found that a transdiagnostic
symptom dimension characterised by ‘anxious-depression’(AD)
was associated with systematically low confidence during
performance of a perceptual decision-making task with con-
fidence ratings, despite showing no detriment in objective
accuracy. Conversely, a symptom dimension characterised by
‘compulsive behaviour and intrusive thoughts’(CIT) was asso-
ciated with systematic over-confidence. We recently replicated
and extended these findings to show that the under- and over-
confidence associated with AD and CIT, respectively, are reliable
and domain general [15]. However, it remains unknown whether
these confidence alterations influence information-seeking beha-
viour. Intriguingly, previous studies suggest that distortions of
confidence associated with individuals holding radical and/or
dogmatic political beliefs result in sub-optimal information-
seeking under uncertainty [8,18].
In addition to psychopathology, distortions of metacognition
and subjective confidence have also been associated with healthy
aging [19–21]. In a study by McWilliams et al. [20], older adults
reported systematically low confidence across both memory and
perception tasks despite showing no detriment in accuracy (i.e.,
Received: 30 October 2023 Revised: 20 August 2024 Accepted: 23 August 2024
1
School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
2
Division of Psychology, School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, University of Dundee,
Dundee, UK.
3
These authors contributed equally: Robin A. A. Ince, Christopher S. Y. Benwell. ✉email: c.benwell@dundee.ac.uk
www.nature.com/tp
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performance comparable to young adults). This suggests an
increase in negative confidence bias across the lifespan even
when objective performance remains stable.
Here, we investigated the relationships between transdiagnostic
psychiatric symptom dimensions, age, and information-seeking in
a large general population sample (N =908). Participants com-
pleted a short battery of psychiatric symptom questionnaires [22]
and performed a perceptual decision-making task with confidence
ratings in which we manipulated the cost of seeking information
on each trial. We hypothesized that the anxious-depression
dimension would be associated with systematically low con-
fidence (but not reduced accuracy) and increased information
seeking, whereas compulsivity would be associated with systema-
tic over-confidence and reduced information seeking. Addition-
ally, we hypothesized that age would be negatively related to
subjective confidence and positively related to information
seeking.
METHODS
Participants
Participants were recruited online using the Prolific(https://
www.prolific.co) and Sona Systems (https://www.sona-systems.com)
recruitment platforms (1156 participants (874 Female/ 273 Male/ 9 Other),
17–80 years old (M =33.32, SD =14.73)). Some participants (N =700) were
paid £6 for their time, whilst others received undergraduate course credits
(N =456). All participants were offered a £20 reward if they achieved the
top score on the information seeking task to motivate performance. The
sample size was chosen to ensure adequate statistical power to detect
effects at least as strong as those observed in a previous study from our lab
[15]. Specifically, we based the power analysis (performed in G*Power) on
the lowest significant effect size observed for a single symptom dimension
across the symptom dimension-behaviour relationships in the previous
study (Compulsive Behaviour and Intrusive Thought (CIT)-accuracy (d’)
relationship: f
2
=0.02). The power analysis indicated that 395 participants
would be required to achieve 80% statistical power to detect such an
effect. While we had directly relevant previous work on which to base
estimates of effect sizes for relationships between symptom dimensions
and first-order accuracy and confidence, we had less to go on regarding
potential symptom-information seeking relationships. In Schulz et al. [8],
some participants didn’t use the information seeking option at all and so
we assumed we may need a larger sample to detect relationships with this
measure. Hence, the large sample size allowed for high statistical power to
be retained, even after data exclusion.
Pre-defined exclusion criteria (outlined below) led to the exclusion of
314 participants, leaving a final sample of 908 participants (692 female/
216 male aged from 17 to 80 years (M=34.45, SD =15.10)). The overall
exclusion rate (21%) is in line with previous similar online studies both
from our own group [15] and others [8,16,17,23]. To ensure that the key
results were not influenced by the exclusion of these participants, we
repeated the key analyses on the full sample with no performance-based
exclusions (Supplementary Fig. S5). The study received ethical approval
from the University of Dundee Research Ethics Committee and University
of Glasgow Ethics Committee (300210261). All participants provided
informed consent. All methods were performed in accordance with the
relevant guidelines and regulations, ensuring compliance with established
standards.
Perceptual information-seeking task
The task was designed to combine the task parameters of Benwell et al.
[15] and Schulz et al. [8]. A 2-alternative forced-choice numerosity
discrimination task was used in which participants judged which of two
boxes contained a higher number of dots. Figure 1shows a schematic of
the trial procedure. On each trial, a black cross appeared in the centre of a
white screen for 1000 milliseconds (ms). This was followed by two black
boxes, one on the left and one on the right side of the screen, which
appeared simultaneously for 400 ms. Both boxes contained numerous
white dots. The participant was asked to choose which box had contained
a larger number of dots by pressing the ‘w’key for left box or the ‘e’key for
right box. One box (the reference box) always contained 272 dots (out of
544 possible dot locations) while the other box contained an increased or
reduced number of dots ranging from –64 to +64 dots (in increments of 8)
in comparison to the reference. The location (left or right) of the reference
box varied across trials and within each of the difficulty levels. The order of
stimulus presentation was randomly generated for each participant within
each block. Participants could respond after the stimulus screen changed
to the response screen (i.e., not during the 400 ms of stimulus
presentation). There was no time limit for the response and participants
were not given feedback on whether their response was correct. After
providing a response, participants were asked to rate ‘how confident are
you that the decision was correct?’on a scale of 1 (Not confident) to 6
(certain), equivalent to a half-confidence scale. Participants were instructed
that if they were very unsure in their decision that they should choose the
lowest (‘Not confident (guessing)’) option. There was no time limit for the
confidence rating.
To assess the tendency to seek further information in cases of
uncertainty, after the first choice and confidence rating the participant
was offered the chance to see the stimuli again (for a cost of either -5 or
-20 points, depending on the block). If they chose to see the stimuli again,
they were presented the same stimuli for a further 800 ms. Hence, seeing
the stimuli again was always helpful. If they chose not to see again, they
did not lose any points, but they instead saw two empty boxes for 800 ms.
Regardless of whether they sought further information or not, the
participant then made a final judgement on which box had contained
more dots and provided a final confidence rating. To incentivize subjects
to strive for the best possible overall accuracy, they either gained
(appetitive blocks) or lost (aversive blocks) points based on their
performance on this final decision. In appetitive blocks, if they were
correct in this 2
nd
choice then they were awarded 100 points, whereas if
they were wrong, they gained 0 points. In aversive blocks, if they were
correct in the 2
nd
choice then they lost 0 points, whereas if they were
wrong, they lost 100 points. Participants were reminded of the current
rules (i.e., appetitive v aversive, low versus high information seeking cost)
on each trial. Each participant completed a total of 128 trials (16 trials at
each difficulty level, split evenly into 4 blocks consisting of 32 trials each).
Participants were instructed before beginning the task that the individual
who achieved the highest number of points overall would receive a £20
reward on top of their initial renumeration for participation.
The rationale for including the cost manipulation was to replicate the
task structure of Schulz et al. [8], who included high- and low-cost
conditions. As Schulz et al. describe, a Bayes-optimal agent will seek
information when the cost is outweighed by the likelihood of having made
a mistake (indexed by uncertainty). As such, information seeking should be
lower when the cost of seeking is higher. Therefore, including the cost
manipulation in our study allowed us to ensure that participants were
completing the task as expected, and provided consistency with Schulz
et al. [8]
The rationale for the inclusion of the appetitive vs aversive blocks was to
allow to us to further explore information-seeking behaviour by establish-
ing a baseline for a deviation from optimal information seeking in the form
of a potential loss aversion bias –i.e., would people be more willing to
invest more in information seeking when avoiding a loss compared with
earning a reward? [24]. Answering this question would inform models of
metacognition and information seeking, e.g., to provide the potential to
extend process models of metacognition to account for information
seeking decisions and/or provide useful data for more detailed models of
information seeking [9].
Participants could take a self-paced break between blocks. Before
starting the task, participants completed 4 practice trials in which they only
had to make the initial decision (stimuli presentation, response, confidence
rating) with feedback (a green tick for correct or a red cross for incorrect).
Two further practice trials were used to familiarise participants with the
confidence rating scale in which they were instructed how to respond if
they were confident or not confident. Participants then completed 6
practice trials which had the same structure as the main task trials (stimuli
presentation, response, confidence rating, see-again decision, stimuli
presentation, response, confidence rating) but participants could see their
cumulative score on the screen throughout these trials. Participants were
not informed of their score at any point throughout the main task. To
counterbalance the order of information cost conditions, participants were
randomly assigned to complete the experiment in either order A
(appetitive/low-cost block; aversive/low-cost block; appetitive/high-cost
block; aversive/high-cost block) or order B (appetitive/high-cost block;
aversive/high-cost block; appetitive/low-cost block; aversive/low-cost
block). Reward conditions were always presented with the appetitive
block first to induce a stronger feeling of loss when previously gained
points were deducted for incorrect responses [25,26].
G. Mohr et al.
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Translational Psychiatry (2024) 14:353
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Task outcome measures
For each participant we calculated 5 primary outcome measures. For each
of the first and final decisions we calculated 1
st
-order accuracy (indexed by
Type-1 sensitivity (d’)) and confidence (indexed by mean confidence rating
across trials). We also considered the percentage of trials in which
participants selected the information seeking option to see the stimulus
again between the first and final decisions.
Note that due to recently reported limitations of the m-ratio [27]asa
reliable and unbiased measure of metacognitive ability, particularly when
tasks have under 400 trials [12,28,29], we did not include this measure as
one of the primary outcomes. However, for completeness and consistency
with previous studies [15–17], we report regression results between
m-ratio and both age and symptom dimensions in Supplementary Fig. S6.
Self-report psychiatric symptom questionnaires
Each participant completed selected items (total =63) from a battery of
eight mental health questionnaires [30–37] which assessed symptomology
across a range of disorders. The items were identical to those used by [22]
who showed that they provide an accurate approximation of three
transdiagnostic symptom dimensions identified in previous research
labelled ‘Anxious-Depression’(AD), ‘Compulsive Behaviour and Intrusive
Thoughts’(CIT) and ‘Social Withdrawal’(SW) [15,17,38]. To calculate
dimension scores for each participant, the raw responses for each item
were first z-scored across participants, then the individual item z-scores
within each participant were multiplied by their corresponding factor
weights [22] and the resulting products were summed across all items for
each factor. Finally, the factor sums were z-scored across participants in
preparation for statistical analyses.
Procedure
The experiment was conducted online via the Gorilla experiment platform
[39] and could only be completed on either a laptop or computer (and not
on a mobile phone or tablet) to facilitate a more optimal screen size for the
task. Participants were first directed to an information sheet and consent
form. If informed consent was given, participants were asked to provide
demographic information of age and sex assigned at birth. The
participants then completed the questionnaires and task in a randomised
order. The experimental session took approximately 1 h.
Exclusion criteria
Several predefined exclusion criteria were applied to the data. Approxi-
mately 21% of participants were excluded, leaving 908 participants. This
exclusion rate is in line with those observed in previous online studies [23]
Participants who met any one or more of the following criteria were
excluded from all analyses:
●Did not provide sex assigned at birth (n =9, <0.01%).
●Below- or near-chance task performance (overall accuracy on first
decision of the information-seeking task <55%) (n =220, 19.03%).
●Incorrect response to a ‘catch’item employed as an attention check
Left soRight
+tourist/p/
so Very so
-5/-20
points
+100 or 0/
0 or -100
points
Not
confident confident
Don’t
Show
Show
Again
1000 ms 400 ms no limit no limit
First
Decision
First
Confidence
Rating
See-Again
Decision
Which side had more dots?
no limit
Left soRight
+
tourist/p/
so Very
Not
confident confident
450 ms
800 ms
no limit
Which side had more dots?
no limit
Second
Decision
Second
Confidence
Rating
Trial Part 1Trial Part 2
…
…
Fig. 1 Information-seeking task. On each trial, participants judged which box (left or right) contained the higher number of dots and
provided a confidence rating in each decision (scale of 1–6, where 1 represented “not confident (guessing)”and 6 represented “certain”).
Participants were then given the chance to see the stimuli again for a certain cost and were subsequently shown either the stimuli or two
blank black squares again. Participants were asked again to judge which box (left or right) contained the higher number of dots and provided
a confidence rating. A correct final answer either provided a reward or the aversion of a loss.
G. Mohr et al.
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Translational Psychiatry (2024) 14:353
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(n =20, 1.73%). The ‘catch’item was embedded within the reduced
Zung Depression Scale items and read as follows: “If you are paying
attention, please select ‘Good part of the time’for this answer”.
●Used the same single confidence rating across all trials on the first
decision of the task (n =15, 1.30%).
Statistical analyses
Paired-samples t-tests were employed to test for differences in task
measures (type-1 sensitivity (d’), average confidence ratings, percentage of
information seeking trials) between conditions. We built linear regression
models to examine the relationships between task measures and
psychiatric symptoms, whilst always controlling for age and sex. All
regressions were conducted using the fitlm function in MATLAB (Math-
works, USA). Z-scores of all regressors were calculated to ensure
comparability of regression coefficients. Sex was coded as female: -1,
male: 1. For the regression models assessing relationships between the
psychiatric symptom dimensions and the task measures, all symptom
dimensions were entered in the same regression model using the
following fitlm syntax:
Dependent Variable 1þzscoreðADÞþzscoreðCITÞþzscoreðSW Þ
þzscoreðAgeÞþSex
Mediation analysis
This analysis was conducted using the mediation function (with default
options) from the Mediation Toolbox (https://github.com/canlab/
MediationToolbox)[40–42].
Trial-by-trial modelling of information search
To further investigate how individuals’confidence and the cost of
information influenced seeking behaviour, we modelled information
seeking on a trial-by-trial basis within participants. Taking a similar
approach to Schulz et al. [8], we calculated logistic regression coefficients
within each participant from a model in which a trial-wise vector of
z-scored first decision-confidence judgements and the binarized cost
conditions (high cost (20 points) =1, low cost (5 points) =-1) predicted
single-trial information seeking (seek =1, not seek =0) choices using the
following model in Matlab’sfitglm function with the Distribution option set
to binomial.
info seeking choice 1þzscoreðconfidence rating1Þþcost condition
From this, we were able to derive, for each participant, an intercept
representing their overall willingness to seek information, a confidence
coefficient representing the extent to which confidence influenced
information seeking and a cost coefficient representing the influence of
the cost condition on information seeking.
We then regressed these coefficients against the symptom dimension
scores whilst controlling for age and sex. For this analysis, we excluded any
participants who sought information on more than 95% or fewer than 5%
of trials, or for whom the logistic regression model failed to converge
(resulting in an N of 608).
Multiple comparison correction
We used the Benjamini and Yekutieli (2001) procedure [43,44] for
controlling the false discovery rate (FDR) for each family of tests (specified
in the results section). This provides a critical p-value according to which all
uncorrected p values less than or equal to are considered significant. The
desired false discovery rate was set to q =0.05.
RESULTS
In an online study, participants (N =908) from the general
population completed a battery of self-report psychiatric symp-
tom questionnaires and performed an information-seeking task
with confidence ratings in which information cost (high versus
low) and reward valence (appetitive versus aversive) were
manipulated between blocks (see Fig. 1). Sample distributions of
transdiagnostic dimension scores, tasks measures and demo-
graphics are shown in Supplementary Fig. S1.
Adaptive use of information seeking
First, we investigated whether participants used the opportunity
to seek information in the task in an adaptive way (see Fig. 2). As
expected, and in line with previous research [8], participants were
more likely to seek information on trials where they initially gave
an incorrect response (Fig. 2A: t(907) =–32.2, p < 0.001), and final
decision accuracy was higher for trials in which participants chose
to seek information than for trials in which they chose not to (Fig.
2B: t(814) =7.70, p < 0.001).
Between-participants, those who used the opportunity to
seek information more often tended to be more accurate in
their final decisions (Fig. 2C: r(906) =0.34, p < 0.001).
Additionally, participants were more likely to seek information
when they reported low confidence in the initial decision
(Fig. 2D: low versus medium confidence (t(890) =29.6, p <
0.001), medium versus high confidence (t(898) =25.1, p <
0.001)) and when the cost of seeking information was low
(Fig. 2E: t(819) =15.9, p < 0.001). Finally, participants were
equally likely to seek information on appetitive and aversive
trials (Fig. 2F: t(907) =0.93, p =0.35).
Information seeking and psychiatric symptom dimensions
We next turned to our main hypotheses and investigated the
relationships between the task measures, including confidence
and information-seeking, and three previously identified trans-
diagnostic symptom dimensions of ‘anxious depression’(AD),
‘compulsive behaviour and intrusive thought’(CIT) and ‘social
withdrawal’(SW) [15,17,22,38,45], along with age and sex (see
“Methods”). Figure 3plots standardised regression coefficients
indexing the strength and direction of the relationships between
symptom dimension scores and each task measure for both the
1st and final decisions. We controlled the False Discovery Rate
(FDR) at q=0.05 over the 25 inferences considered (5 models x 5
predictors).
For first decisions, the accuracy and confidence results closely
replicate our previous study (Benwell et al. [15]; see also Hoven
et al. [16]). The CIT dimension showed a paradoxical dissociation,
being significantly associated with low objective accuracy
(β=–0.11, p < 0.01) but high subjective confidence (β=0.12,
p < 0.01). Conversely, the AD dimension was not associated with
objective accuracy (β=0.02, p =0.71), but was associated with
systematically low confidence (β=-0.21, p < 0.001). Interestingly,
demographic variables also showed systematic relationships with
first decision accuracy and confidence: older age was associated
with both reduced accuracy (β=–0.22, p < 0.001) and reduced
confidence (β=–0.12, p =0.001), whereas male sex was asso-
ciated with increased accuracy (β=0.12, p =0.002) and increased
confidence (β=0.17, p < 0.001).
Despite replicating distortions of confidence in both AD and
CIT, we observed no systematic relationships between symptom
dimension scores and individual differences in the total amount
of information seeking (AD: β=0.00, p =0.92; CIT: β=-0.01,
p=0.76; SW: β=0.06, p < 0.12). Hence, the systematic under- and
over-confidence observed for first decisions in AD and CIT,
respectively, did not result in systematically increased or
decreased information seeking behaviour, contrary to our
hypotheses. Accordingly, for the final decisions (Fig. 3B) AD
remained associated with low confidence (β=–0.21, p < 0.001)
and CIT was again associated with low objective accuracy
(β=−0.13, p =.003), though the relationship with high
confidence was no longer significant (β=0.07, p =0.11). Hence,
individuals scoring highly for CIT did not use the information
seeking option more often to improve their performance on the
final decision and those scoring highly for AD did not use more
G. Mohr et al.
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information seeking to increase their confidence from the first to
the final decisions.
Age was associated with reduced accuracy and lower
confidence in the first decision. In contrast to AD and CIT,
however, age was also associated with increased information
seeking (β=0.36, p < 0.001). Interestingly, for the final decisions
(Fig. 3B) older participants no longer showed any accuracy
detriment (β=–0.03, p =0.42) or reduction in confidence
(β=–0.04, p =0.29). This indicates that, unlike for CIT and AD,
older participants may have used the option to seek information
to both improve performance and increase confidence in their
final decisions.
Accuracy
First Decision Final Decision
AccuracyConfidence Information
Seeking Confidence
*
*
**
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
Regression Coefficient
Age
Sex
AD
CIT
SW
Fig. 3 Relationships between behavioural measures and transdiagnostic symptom dimensions. Standardised regression coefficients (error
bars show ±standard error) from linear models performed for each task measure (dependent variable) with age, sex (male: 1, female: -1), and
symptom dimensions as independent variables. *q < 0.05 corrected for false discovery rate (FDR) over all coefficients (i.e., 5 models x 5
predictors =25 inferences).
Appetitive Aversive
0
20
40
60
80
100
Average Information Seeking (%)
Reward Condition
F
Yes N o
Information Seeking
0
20
40
60
80
100
Final Decision Accuracy (%)
B
50 60 70 80 90 100
Final Decision Accuracy (%)
0
20
40
60
80
100
Average Information Seeking (%)
C
Correct Incorrect
First Decision
0
20
40
60
80
100
Average Information Seeking (%)
A
Low Medium High
Confidence
0
20
40
60
80
100
Average Information Seeking (%)
D
Cost
Low High
0
20
40
60
80
100
Average Information Seeking (%)
E
** **
**** **
**
Fig. 2 Overall use of information seeking in the perceptual task. A Participants were more likely to seek information after an incorrect initial
decision. BParticipants were more likely to be correct in the final decision after choosing to see the additional information. CParticipants who
sought information more often had higher overall accuracy on the final decisions. DParticipants used the information seeking option more
when their initial decision confidence was lower. EParticipants were more likely to seek information when the cost was low. FThere was no
difference in overall information seeking between appetitive and aversive trials. ** p <.001. Together, these results show participants were
using the option to seek information in a consistent and adaptive way.
G. Mohr et al.
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One possible explanation for the positive relationship between
age and information seeking may be that reduced first-decision
accuracy led older participants to seek information more often
than young participants. To establish if the relationship could be
explained entirely by the reduced initial accuracy of older
participants, we modelled information seeking with age, sex and
first-decision accuracy as predictors. First-decision accuracy was
related to information seeking (β=7.46 ± 1.94 [SE], p < 0.001), but
increasing age remained significantly related to increased
information seeking (β=0.71 ± 0.06 [SE], p < 8e-32) even when
accounting for accuracy in the model. The fact that age predicted
information seeking independently of first-decision accuracy
suggests that older participants had an increased tendency to
use the information seeking option in general, not just when they
were initially incorrect. Indeed, age was significantly related to
information-seeking both for correct (β=.36, p < 0.001) and
incorrect (β=.27, p < 0.001) first-decision trials. This increased
tendency to seek information regardless of initial accuracy
suggests that older participants’introspection was not necessarily
optimal but rather likely reflects the fact that they had lower
confidence in general about their ability to perform the task.
Additionally, the increased information-seeking as a function of
age was unlikely to be explained by the information being
inherently more helpful for older versus younger participants (see
Supplementary Fig. S2). We also investigated the relationship
between age and information seeking separately for younger vs
older participants (approximate median split at age=32) and
found that the relationship was highly consistent in both sub-
groups (Supplementary Fig. S3).
There was no relationship between sex and information seeking
(β=0.17, p =0.63). While the association with confidence
remained in the final decision (β=0.16, p <0.001), the association
with accuracy did not (β=0.04, p =0.32). Thus, while females did
not use the information seeking option more on average, they
may have used the information seeking option more efficiently to
increase performance.
Note that all relationships reported above between symptom
dimensions or demographic variables and task measures were
replicated across all task conditions—i.e., were independent of
information costs and reward valence (see Supplementary Fig. S4).
We also validated that the results were not influenced by the
participant exclusion criteria, by repeating the analysis shown in Fig.
3on the full dataset with no participants excluded (Supplementary
Fig. S5). In line with previous studies [12,15,16,46], no relationships
surviving multiple comparison correction were found between
metacognitive efficiency (meta-d’/d’) and any of the symptom
dimensions, age, or sex for either the first or final decisions (see
Supplementary Fig. S6).
Information-seeking mediates age-related increases in
accuracy and confidence from first to final decisions
Having established older adults sought more information overall,
we next tested whether this had resulted in increases in either
accuracy and/or confidence in their final decisions using media-
tion analyses (Fig. 4). Older participants more often changed from
inaccurate first responses to accurate final responses (total effect:
β=0.173, p < 0.001) and this effect was fully mediated by their
increased willingness to seek information (mediation effect:
β=0.121, p < 0.001, corrected direct effect: β=0.052, p =0.12)
(Fig. 4A). Additionally, older participants increased in confidence
more from first to final decisions (total effect: β=0.088, p =0.008)
and this effect was also fully mediated by their increased
willingness to seek information (mediation effect: β=0.151,
p < 0.001, corrected direct effect: β=–0.062, p =0.06) (Fig. 4B).
Together, these findings show that increased information
seeking in older participants improved their objective perceptual
performance and increased their confidence accordingly.
Trial-by-trial modelling of information search
Finally, we investigated how trial-by-trial decisions to seek
information were informed by initial confidence judgements
and the cost of information within participants [8]. Using a
logistic regression model predicting single-trial choices to seek
information from initial confidence ratings and information
cost (–5or–20 points) (see “Methods”), we derived measures
for each participant indexing three independent behavioural
phenomena: an intercept (β
0
) representing a general shift in
willingness to seek information, and coefficients representing
how strongly initial confidence (β
conf
) and information cost
(β
cost
)influenced choices to seek information. The distributions
Age
Age
Information
Information
Seeking
Seeking
Accuracy
Confidence
Change
Change
β= .362, p < .001
β= .362, p < .001
β=.333, p < .001
β=.417,p<.001
β = .052, p = .12
β=-.062,p=.06
(β = .173, p < .001)
(β = .088, p = .008)
β= .121, p < .001
β= .151, p < .001
A
B
Fig. 4 Mediation analysis of age-related information seeking effects. Increased information seeking mediated a relationship between age
and changes in accuracy between first and final decisions (A), and between age and changes in confidence (B). The mediated relationships are
shown in bold; the unmediated relationships are shown in blue, and the total relationships are shown in light grey.
G. Mohr et al.
6
Translational Psychiatry (2024) 14:353
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved
of the coefficients are shown in Fig. 5A. We then regressed
these measures against the demographics and symptom
dimensions (see Fig. 5B).
As expected, based on the model-free results reported in Fig.
3and given that β
0
captures the overall average information
seeking, we found no significant relationships surviving multiple
comparison correction between the intercept (β
0
:indexingthe
overall tendency to seek information) and any of the symptom
dimensions (Fig. 5A) (AD: β=–0.0006, p =0.90; CIT: β=0.098,
p=0.046; SW: β=0.00, p =0.99). Additionally, the single-trial
modelling revealed no differential influence of confidence
(β
conf
)(AD:β=–0.09, p =0.06; CIT: β=0.11, p =0.03; SW:
β=–0.03, p =0.44) or cost (β
cost
)(AD:β=0.02, p =0.66; CIT:
β=–0.02, p =0.65; SW: β=–0.00, p =0.97) on information
seeking for any of the symptom dimensions.
In line with the model-free results, age was associated with an
increased overall tendency to seek information (intercept:
β=0.39, p < 0.001). However, relationships between age and
the influence of initial confidence, β
conf
(β=–0.10, p =0.02) and
cost β
cost
,(β=–0.11, p =0.01) did not survive control for False
Discovery Rate. Together, this indicates that older participants
were not more influenced by their initial confidence or the cost of
seeking when deciding whether to seek information compared
with younger participants.
DISCUSSION
Distortions of confidence have been linked to both aging [19–21]
and various forms of psychopathology [13,14] but it remains
unknown whether confidence-related behaviours such as infor-
mation seeking are affected. Here, confidence abnormalities
associated with distinct transdiagnostic symptom dimensions
(low confidence in anxious-depression and impaired accuracy/
overconfidence in compulsivity) did not result in altered
information-seeking prior to final perceptual decisions. In contrast,
older participants displayed an adaptive use of information-
seeking, whereby they gathered additional perceptual information
to overcome initial objective accuracy and confidence deficits.
In line with previous research, an ‘anxious-depression’(AD)
dimension was associated with low confidence in task perfor-
mance, even in the absence of objective deficits [12,15–17,47].
However, when high AD participants had the chance to increase
confidence through seeking additional information, they did not
take it more often than those scoring low for AD. Hence, high AD
participants remained low in confidence in their final decisions.
These results are in line with previous studies which have not
found an overall increased tendency to seek information in
depression [48] or anxiety [49] and suggest that the low
confidence experienced by AD individuals does not drive
increased information seeking. This apparent dissociation
between confidence and information-seeking may be explained
by high AD participants anticipating that information seeking
would not effectively reduce their uncertainty and may even add
to it [48,50,51]. Alternatively, anhedonia and apathy represent
cardinal symptoms of depression [52,53] which may reduce the
motivation of high AD participants to increase their confidence
through actively seeking information.
The ‘compulsive behaviour and intrusive thought’(CIT) dimen-
sion was associated with reduced 1
st
-order accuracy but a
paradoxical positive confidence bias, in line with previous research
[15–17,54,55]. However, CIT was not associated with altered
information-seeking, and high CIT participants remained impaired
in their final decisions. Hence, high CIT participants did not use the
opportunity to seek information enough to overcome their initial
accuracy detriment, potentially due to inappropriately high
confidence. Interestingly, Hauser et al., [56] found that when
there was no cost to information-seeking, highly compulsive
individuals sought more information than low compulsive
individuals prior to committing to a final decision. However,
when there was a cost to information-seeking, no difference was
observed between high and low compulsive groups, in line with
the current study. Future studies could investigate further how
cost-benefit trade-offs influence information-seeking in compul-
sive individuals [57].
Our results provide further evidence for an altered mapping
between confidence and behaviour in compulsive individuals [55],
which may impair decision-making and contribute to cognitive
inflexibility [58,59]. It remains unclear exactly what causes the 1st-
order decision deficits associated with CIT. In our previous study
[15], we observed CIT-related decision impairments across both
perceptual and semantic knowledge tasks, thereby ruling out an
explanation in terms of low-level sensory dysfunction. Alterna-
tively, the decision impairments may arise due to some
combination of increased choice variability/choice history bias
[59–61], inappropriate speed-accuracy trade-off [62], and/or a
recently proposed ‘decision acuity’trait found to underlie
performance across a range of decision tasks [63].
By employing a low-level perceptual decision-making task, we
were able to rule out any potential influence of contextual factors,
motivated reasoning and/or prior knowledge on task performance
[8,18]. This allowed us to test whether symptom-related
signatures of confidence and/or information-seeking exist as core
cognitive traits, potentially influencing decisions related to all
aspects of a person’s life, not just those directly related to their
Estimate
β₀ βconf βcost
-10
-5
0
5
10
o
o
o
o
A
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
Regression Coefficient
β₀ βconf βcost
*Age
Sex
AD
CIT
SW
B
Fig. 5 Trial-by-trial logistic regression model of information seeking behaviour. A Boxplots showing the distributions of within-participant
logistic model coefficients. The decision to seek additional information was captured using a model with three parameters: an intercept β
0
,a
confidence parameter β
conf
, and a cost parameter β
cost
.BStandardised regression coefficients (error bars show ± standard error) from linear
models applied to each coefficient (dependent variable) with age, sex, and symptom dimensions as independent variables. °p < 0.05
uncorrected; *q < 0.05 corrected for false discovery rate (FDR) over all coefficients shown (i.e. 3 models x 5 predictors =15 inferences).
G. Mohr et al.
7
Translational Psychiatry (2024) 14:353
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved
symptoms. Based on our results, we propose that impaired
decision-making (in CIT) and confidence alterations (low con-
fidence in AD and high confidence in CIT) appear to represent
core cognitive traits associated with symptomology, whereas
systematically altered information-seeking does not. However, this
does not rule out the possibility that symptom-related informa-
tion-seeking alterations do exist in specific contexts and domains.
For instance, anxious individuals may selectively increase
information-seeking when faced with real-world threats and/or
when they experience large changes in their external environment
[49]. Additionally, health anxiety is known to be associated with
excessive searching for health-related information [64,65]. Hence,
psychiatrically relevant information-seeking behaviours are unli-
kely to represent a core computational deficit but rather selective
alterations for stimuli related to symptom-relevant themes.
In contrast to the symptom dimensions, we observed increased
use of information-seeking related to aging. Older adults
performed objectively worse in their initial perceptual decisions
[66–69] and reported lower confidence. However, they improved
their accuracy and confidence through increased information-
seeking and performed just as well as younger adults for final
decisions. These results are in line with a well-preserved
metacognitive capacity in older age [20,70,71] as older
individuals appropriately operationalised their uncertainty in the
form of information seeking [1], in contrast to individuals
reporting high levels of AD and CIT. An important step in future
studies will be to ascertain whether the age-related increase in
information-seeking observed here generalises to different tasks
and to alternative forms of information manipulations. For
instance, the manipulation of evidence strength when seeking
extra information used in the current study was an increased
duration of stimulus presentation time, which may have been
particularly favourable for older participants. It remains to be seen
if similar results would be seen for alternative manipulations such
as an easier version of the stimulus being presented for the same
fixed presentation time.
Information-seeking represents one of many behaviours
strongly influenced by subjective confidence. Future studies can
investigate whether age and psychiatrically relevant confidence
changes influence other confidence-related behaviours such as
deliberation [72], cognitive offloading [73–75], learning [5] and/or
the engagement of cognitive control [76,77]. Here, we adopted a
transdiagnostic, dimensional approach to symptoms and assessed
variation in the general population [38,78]. It would also be of
interest to test confidence-behaviour relationships in clinical
samples with high levels of symptom severity. Understanding
the behavioural signatures of psychiatric symptoms can help to
identify factors which perpetuate poor mental health and
potentially inform intervention and prevention.
DATA AVAILABILITY
All data are openly available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) under the URL:
https://osf.io/wamgt/.
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G. Mohr et al.
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Translational Psychiatry (2024) 14:353
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study was supported by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust and the United
Kingdom Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy [SRG19/191169]
and the United Kingdom Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
[EP/R513222/1].
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
CSYB conceived the project. GM implemented and ran the experiment. GM and RAAI
performed data preprocessing. GM, RAAI and CSYB performed statistical analysis.
CSYB, RAAI and GM wrote the paper. CSYB and RAAI supervised the project.
COMPETING INTERESTS
The authors declare no competing interests.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material
available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-024-03065-w.
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to
Christopher S. Y. Benwell.
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