Talk:Post-decision wagering

“Post-decision wagering does not make any assumptions about what information is used to make the wagers. Specifically, it does not assume that different information is used to make visual discriminations and wagers.”

Actually, I think post-decision wagering does assume that different information is used to make visual discriminations and wagers. If the same information is used to make visual discriminations and wagers then that information must necessarily be available to consciousness, otherwise it would not be possible for the subject to use the information to make a wager. To deny this would be to open up the possibility of wagering without awareness, which would undermine the whole premise of using wagering to measure awareness.

I appreciate this comment. I feel that the issue is already discussed at sufficient length in this brief article.

“If GY used the same information to make his visual discriminations and his wagers, he apparently used the information differently: he made the profitable decision in the former but not the latter case. It is difficult to explain this without positing a lack of awareness.”

The point about using the information differently would appear to be trivially true as the tasks were different: one was a Yes-No judgment; the other a High-Low wager. But this does not demonstrate lack of awareness. The optimal strategy is to wager high on all trials regardless of the judgment. The optimal strategy is thus independent of the sensory information so cannot be used as a measure of awareness of that information. If GY’s wagering performance shows lack of awareness of anything, it shows lack of awareness of the optimal wagering strategy. Instead, as pointed out by Schurger & Sher (2008), GY’s performance can be thought of as optimizing a subjective utility function whereby losses carry more weight to the subject than corresponding gains.

This issue is now further developed in the Loss Aversion section.