Categorical judgments do not modify sensory representations in working memory

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Why is it important?

Humans have the tendency to remain consistent with their previous categorical judgments when recalling memorized evidence. This tendency gives rise to many known forms of consistency and confirmation biases. Using a detailed computational model comparison, we show that these biases do not reflect distortions in the memory representation of the evidence but rather result from a biased interpretation of the evidence during memory recall. Our results are important as they suggest that consistency biases are malleable, even reversible, which has implications for our understanding of economic and cognitive decision-making processes and even society at large.