Abstract
It has been well established that, in the context of value-based learning and decision making, the way in which options are paired together (the learning architecture) significantly affects their subjective values as inferred from observed choices. What remains unclear is whether similar distortions emerge when subjective values are assessed in a declarative manner. Across seven experiments, we show that participants remember a systematically biased version of option values that is affected by the context-specific ranking of the option during the learning phase. These results are robust across different value elicitation methods (choice-based and declarative) and decision modalities (experience-based or description-based). Furthermore, we show that presenting the options in different configurations during the learning phase affects their subsequent subjective values. By doing so, we illustrate how principles of context dependence may be employed to design learning environments that enhance value maximisation in decision-making.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank all the members of the Human Reinforcement Learning team for valuable feedback on the study. S.P. is supported by the European Research Council (RaReMem: 101043804), the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (RELATIVE: ANR-21-CE37–0008-01; RANGE: ANR-21-CE28–0024-01) and the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. The Département d’Etudes Cognitives is funded by the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR-17-EURE-0017, ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02). This work has received support under the Major Research Programme of PSL Research University “PSL-Neuro” launched by PSL Research University and implemented by ANR (ANR-10-IDEX-0001).
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Soukupova, M., Garcia, B. & Palminteri, S. Context induces distortions in value representations across multiple elicitation methods and learning modalities. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72644-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72644-w
