%0 Journal Article %A Aaron M. Bornstein %A Mel W. Khaw %A Daphna Shohamy %A Nathaniel D. Daw %T What’s past is present: Reminders of past choices bias decisions for reward in humans %D 2017 %R 10.1101/033910 %J bioRxiv %P 033910 %X We provide evidence that decisions are made by consulting memories for individual past experiences, and that this process can be biased in favor of past choices using incidental reminders. First, in a standard rewarded choice task, we show that a model that estimates value at decision-time using individual samples of past outcomes fits choices and decision-related neural activity better than a canonical incremental learning model. In a second experiment, we bias this sampling process by incidentally reminding participants of individual past decisions. The next decision after a reminder shows a strong influence of the action taken and value received on the reminded trial. These results provide new empirical support for a decision architecture that relies on samples of individual past choice episodes rather than incrementally averaged rewards in evaluating options, and has suggestive implications for the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. %U https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/02/15/033910.full.pdf