The impact of prior beliefs about volatility on adaptive behavior

Humans adapt to environmental changes by balancing empirical observations with prior beliefs and evaluating if unexpected events indicate a true change. The specific factors that govern updating behavior in dynamic environments remain to be elucidated. We here examined how prior beliefs about environmental volatility affect updating of cue-target contingencies, particularly when observations violate these beliefs.

Thirty-two participants completed two versions of a probabilistic reversal-learning task, in which auditory cues signaled the location of a subsequent visual target stimulus. In a reactive task version, participants indicated the target location after its appearance; in a predictive task version, they predicted the target’s location based on the cue information. Cue-target contingencies either remained stable or reversed once within a block, thereby creating a stable and a reversal environment. Before each block, participants received either true or false information about volatility, i.e., about whether the cue-target contingency would remain stable or change. We analyzed reaction times (reactive task) and choices (predictive task) with model-free measures and a Rescorla-Wagner learning model (Fig. 1).

Overview of experimental setup and modelling approach
Fig. 1. Overview of experimental setup and modelling approach.

Participants generally adapted to the contingency changes in both tasks. In the reactive task, prior beliefs had no significant effect. In the predictive task, believing that a reversal environment was stable reduced learning rates. In stable environments, falsely believing the environment contained a reversal increased decision noise, reduced accuracy and increased choice variability (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Influence of the prior volatility belief on the RW model parameters in the predictive task. (A) Learning rate α for both environments (stable, reversal) and priors (true, false). (B)β-values for both environments (stable, reversal) and priors (true, false). (C) Correlation plots between probability of switching and β-values by environment (stable, reversal) and prior (true, false). Asterisks indicate significance levels: p < 0.05 (*), p < 0.01 (**), p < 0.001 (***). Error bars reflect SEMs.

These findings demonstrate that prior beliefs about volatility shape updating in response to task demands and environmental structure.

Publication:

Bleser A, Fink GR, Vossel S, Mengotti P (2026). The impact of prior beliefs about volatility on adaptive behavior. Journal of Cognition, 9(1), 32. doi: 10.5334/joc.504

Letzte Änderung: 25.06.2026