scholarly journals Executive control by fronto-parietal activity explains counterintuitive decision behavior in complex value-based decision-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teppei Matsui ◽  
Yoshiki Hattori ◽  
Kaho Tsumura ◽  
Ryuta Aoki ◽  
Masaki Takeda ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Behavioral Effect ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Probabilistic Uncertainty ◽  
Task Conditions

In real life, humans make decisions by taking into account multiple independent factors, such as delay and probability. Cognitive psychology suggests that cognitive control mechanisms play a key role when facing such complex task conditions. However, in value-based decision-making, it still remains unclear to what extent cognitive control mechanisms become essential when the task condition is complex. In this study, we investigated decision-making behaviors and underlying neural mechanisms using a multifactor gambling task where participants simultaneously considered probability and delay. Decision-making behavior in the multifactor task was modulated by both probability and delay. The behavioral effect of probability was stronger than delay, consistent with previous studies. Furthermore, in a subset of conditions that recruited fronto-parietal activations, reaction times were paradoxically elongated despite lower probabilistic uncertainty. Notably, such a reaction time elongation did not occur in control tasks involving single factors. Meta-analysis of brain activations suggested an association between the paradoxical increase of reaction time and strategy switching. Together, these results suggest a novel aspect of complex value-based decision-makings that is strongly influenced by fronto-parietal cognitive control.

scholarly journals The Neural Basis of Motivational Influences on Cognitive Control

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Parro ◽  
Matthew L Dixon ◽  
Kalina Christoff
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Likelihood Estimation ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
The Brain

AbstractCognitive control mechanisms support the deliberate regulation of thought and behavior based on current goals. Recent work suggests that motivational incentives improve cognitive control, and has begun to elucidate the brain regions that may support this effect. Here, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of motivated cognitive control using activation likelihood estimation (ALE) and Neurosynth in order to delineate the brain regions that are consistently activated across studies. The analysis included functional neuroimaging studies that investigated changes in brain activation during cognitive control tasks when reward incentives were present versus absent. The ALE analysis revealed consistent recruitment in regions associated with the frontoparietal control network including the inferior frontal sulcus (IFS) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS), as well as consistent recruitment in regions associated with the salience network including the anterior insula and anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC). A large-scale exploratory meta-analysis using Neurosynth replicated the ALE results, and also identified the caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens, medial thalamus, inferior frontal junction/premotor cortex (IFJ/PMC), and hippocampus. Finally, we conducted separate ALE analyses to compare recruitment during cue and target periods, which tap into proactive engagement of rule-outcome associations, and the mobilization of appropriate viscero-motor states to execute a response, respectively. We found that largely distinct sets of brain regions are recruited during cue and target periods. Altogether, these findings suggest that flexible interactions between frontoparietal, salience, and dopaminergic midbrain-striatal networks may allow control demands to be precisely tailored based on expected value.

scholarly journals Retrieval of a well-established skill is resistant to distraction: Evidence from an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0243541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teodóra Vékony ◽  
Lilla Török ◽  
Felipe Pedraza ◽  
Kate Schipper ◽  
Claire Pleche ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dual Task ◽  
Sequence Learning ◽  
Secondary Task ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Concurrent Task ◽  
Sequence Information ◽  
Task Effect ◽  
Task Conditions

The characteristics of acquiring new sequence information under dual-task situations have been extensively studied. A concurrent task has often been found to affect performance. In real life, however, we mostly perform a secondary task when the primary task is already well acquired. The effect of a secondary task on the ability to retrieve well-established sequence representations remains elusive. The present study investigates whether accessing well-acquired probabilistic sequence knowledge is affected by a concurrent task. Participants acquired non-adjacent regularities in an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task. After a 24-hour offline period, participants were tested on the same probabilistic sequence learning task under dual-task or single-task conditions. Here, we show that although the secondary task significantly prolonged the overall reaction times in the primary (sequence learning) task, access to the previously learned probabilistic representations remained intact. Our results highlight the importance of studying the dual-task effect not only in the learning phase but also during memory access to reveal the robustness of the acquired skill.

scholarly journals Confidence in subjective pain is predicted by reaction time during decision making

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Troy C. Dildine ◽  
Elizabeth A. Necka ◽  
Lauren Y. Atlas
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Pain Rating ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Thermal Pain ◽  
Pain Ratings ◽  
Subjective Pain

AbstractSelf-report is the gold standard for measuring pain. However, decisions about pain can vary substantially within and between individuals. We measured whether self-reported pain is accompanied by metacognition and variations in confidence, similar to perceptual decision-making in other modalities. Eighty healthy volunteers underwent acute thermal pain and provided pain ratings followed by confidence judgments on continuous visual analogue scales. We investigated whether eye fixations and reaction time during pain rating might serve as implicit markers of confidence. Confidence varied across trials and increased confidence was associated with faster pain rating reaction times. The association between confidence and fixations varied across individuals as a function of the reliability of individuals’ association between temperature and pain. Taken together, this work indicates that individuals can provide metacognitive judgments of pain and extends research on confidence in perceptual decision-making to pain.

Task Complexity and Manual Reaction Times in People Who Stutter

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 708-714 ◽  
Author(s):  
William G. Webster ◽  
C. R. Lynne Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Task Complexity ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Response Planning ◽  
Group Response ◽  
Response Alternatives ◽  
Task Conditions ◽  
Decision Complexity

The study was designed to test the hypothesis that manual reaction time differences between people who stutter and those who do not reflect the information processing complexity of the task. The study focused on decision complexity in a reaction time paradigm. One manipulation involved increasing the number of response alternatives The second involved the spatial contiguity of signal and response locus. Twenty-four adult stutterers and 24 nonstutterers were compared with respect to response initiation and completion times on the various task conditions. Contrary to the hypothesis, there was no significant Group x Complexity interaction in the analysis of either response measure for either complexity manipulation. Stutterers were slower than nonstutterers overall, but with increasing decision complexity, the group response times paralleled one another. It is concluded that whatever response planning and organization deficit there may be in people who stutter, it is independent of decision complexity but may be evident in manipulations of response complexity defined in terms of spatial and temporal coordination.

scholarly journals The interaction between elapsed time and decision accuracy differs between humans and rats

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carly A Shevinsky ◽  
Pamela Reinagel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Local Analysis ◽  
Decision Strategy ◽  
Motion Discrimination ◽  
Motion Coherence ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Individual

AbstractA stochastic visual motion discrimination task is widely used to study rapid decision-making in humans and animals. Among trials of the same sensory difficulty within a block of fixed decision strategy, humans and monkeys are widely reported to make more errors in the individual trials with longer reaction times. This finding has posed a challenge for the drift-diffusion model of sensory decision-making, which in its basic form predicts that errors and correct responses should have the same reaction time distributions. We previously reported that rats also violate this model prediction, but in the opposite direction: for rats, motion discrimination accuracy was highest in the trials with the longest reaction times. To rule out task differences as the cause of our divergent finding in rats, the present study tested humans and rats using the same task and analyzed their data identically. We confirmed that rats’ accuracy increased with reaction time, whereas humans’ accuracy decreased with reaction time in the same task. These results were further verified using a new temporally-local analysis method, ruling out that the observed trend was an artifact of non-stationarity in the data of either species. The main effect was found whether the signal strength (motion coherence) was varied in randomly interleaved trials or held constant within a block. The magnitude of the effects increased with motion coherence. These results provide new constraints useful for refining and discriminating among the many alternative mathematical theories of decision-making.

scholarly journals Proactive and reactive accumulation-to-bound processes compete during perceptual decisions

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lluís Hernández-Navarro ◽  
Ainhoa Hermoso-Mendizabal ◽  
Daniel Duque ◽  
Jaime de la Rocha ◽  
Alexandre Hyafil
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Auditory Task ◽  
Decision Threshold ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Standard Models ◽  
Action Initiation

AbstractStandard models of perceptual decision-making postulate that a response is triggered in reaction to stimulus presentation when the accumulated stimulus evidence reaches a decision threshold. This framework excludes however the possibility that informed responses are generated proactively at a time independent of stimulus. Here, we find that, in a free reaction time auditory task in rats, reactive and proactive responses coexist, suggesting that choice selection and motor initiation, commonly viewed as serial processes, are decoupled in general. We capture this behavior by a novel model in which proactive and reactive responses are triggered whenever either of two competing processes, respectively Action Initiation or Evidence Accumulation, reaches a bound. In both types of response, the choice is ultimately informed by the Evidence Accumulation process. The Action Initiation process readily explains premature responses, contributes to urgency effects at long reaction times and mediates the slowing of the responses as animals get satiated and tired during sessions. Moreover, it successfully predicts reaction time distributions when the stimulus was either delayed, advanced or omitted. Overall, these results fundamentally extend standard models of evidence accumulation in decision making by showing that proactive and reactive processes compete for the generation of responses.

The Effect of Part Proliferation on Assembly Line Operators' Decision Making Capabilities

1979 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-173
Author(s):  
Susanne M. Gatchell
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Choice Reaction Time ◽  
Assembly Line ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Decision Time ◽  
Error Rates

In order to quantify the effects of part proliferation on assembly line operators' decision making capabilities, a research study was conducted. Using a Choice Reaction Time technique, 16 operators were tested to determine their reaction times and error rates when selecting parts. These operators were from four training levels (trained, relief, untrained/job and untrained/plant) and had to decide between 4, 7 or 10 major parts. Results show that operators with 10 parts made 46% more errors and needed 13% more decision time than operators with 4 parts. Furthermore, the relief and untrained/job operators made three times more errors than the trained operators. The untrained/plant operators had over five times more errors than the trained operators. These results indicate that all operators could make a selection when working with 10 major parts. However, their reaction times and error rates increased as the number or parts increased from 4 to 10.

scholarly journals Retrieval of a well-established skill is resistant to distraction: evidence from an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teodóra Vékony ◽  
Lilla Török ◽  
Felipe Pedraza ◽  
Kate Schipper ◽  
Claire Plèche ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dual Task ◽  
Sequence Learning ◽  
Secondary Task ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Concurrent Task ◽  
Sequence Information ◽  
Task Effect ◽  
Task Conditions

AbstractThe characteristics of acquiring new sequence information under dual-task situations have been extensively studied so far. Such a concurrent task has often been found to affect performance. In real life, however, we mostly perform a secondary task when the primary one is already well-acquired. The effect of a secondary task on the ability to retrieve well-established sequence representations remains elusive. The present study investigates whether accessing a well-acquired probabilistic sequence knowledge is affected by a concurrent task. Participants acquired non-adjacent regularities in a perceptual-motor implicit probabilistic sequence learning task. After a 24-hour offline period, participants were tested on the same sequence learning task under dual-task or single-task conditions. Here we show that although the secondary task significantly prolonged the overall reaction times in the primary task, the access to the previously learned probabilistic representations remained intact. Our results highlight the importance of studying the dual-task effect not only in the learning phase but also during memory access.

scholarly journals The P300 as marker of inhibitory control – fact or fiction?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
René J. Huster ◽  
Mari S. Messel ◽  
Christina Thunberg ◽  
Liisa Raud
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Overt Response ◽  
Behavioral Marker ◽  
Behavioral Parameters ◽  
Stop Signal Reaction Time ◽  
Speed Accuracy

AbstractInhibitory control, i.e., the ability to stop or suppress actions, thoughts, or memories, represents a prevalent and popular concept in basic and clinical neuroscience as well as psychology. At the same time, it is notoriously difficult to study as successful inhibition is characterized by the absence of a continuously quantifiable direct behavioral marker. It has been suggested that the P3 latency, and here especially its onset latency, may serve as neurophysiological marker of inhibitory control as it correlates with the stop signal reaction time (SSRT). The SSRT estimates the average stopping latency, which itself is unobservable since no overt response is elicited in successful stop trials, based on differences in the distribution of go reaction times and the delay of the stop- relative to the go-signal in stop trials.In a meta-analysis and an independent EEG experiment, we found that correlations between the P3-latency and the SSRT are indeed replicable, but also unspecific. Not only does the SSRT also correlate with the N2-latency, but both P3- and N2-latency measures show similar or even higher correlations with other behavioral parameters such as the go reaction time or stopping accuracy. The missing specificity of P3-SSRT correlations, together with the general pattern of associations, suggests that these manifest effects are driven by underlying latent processes other than inhibition, such as those associated with the speed-accuracy trade-off.

Confidence in subjective pain: Exploring associations between confidence, eye fixations, and reaction time during pain-related decision making

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Troy C. Dildine ◽  
Elizabeth A. Necka ◽  
Lauren Yvette Atlas
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Pain Rating ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Eye Fixations ◽  
Pain Ratings ◽  
Subjective Pain

Self-report is the gold standard for measuring pain. However, decisions about pain can vary substantially within and between individuals. We measured whether self-reported pain is accompanied by metacognition and variations in confidence, similar to perceptual decision-making in other modalities. Eighty healthy volunteers underwent acute thermal pain and provided pain ratings followed by confidence judgments on continuous visual analogue scales. We investigated whether eye fixations and reaction time during pain rating might serve as implicit markers of confidence. Confidence varied across trials and increased confidence was associated with faster pain rating reaction times. The association between confidence and fixations varied across individuals as a function of the reliability of individuals’ association between temperature and pain. Taken together, this work indicates that individuals can provide metacognitive judgments of pain and extends research on confidence in perceptual decision-making to pain.

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