scholarly journals Perceptual and categorical decision making: goal-relevant representation of two domains at different levels of abstraction

2017 ◽  
Vol 117 (6) ◽  
pp. 2088-2103
Author(s):  
Swetha Shankar ◽  
Andrew S. Kayser
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Brain Networks ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Perceptual Salience ◽  
Dot Motion ◽  
Different Levels

To date it has been unclear whether perceptual decision making and rule-based categorization reflect activation of similar cognitive processes and brain regions. On one hand, both map potentially ambiguous stimuli to a smaller set of motor responses. On the other hand, decisions about perceptual salience typically concern concrete sensory representations derived from a noisy stimulus, while categorization is typically conceptualized as an abstract decision about membership in a potentially arbitrary set. Previous work has primarily examined these types of decisions in isolation. Here we independently varied salience in both the perceptual and categorical domains in a random dot-motion framework by manipulating dot-motion coherence and motion direction relative to a category boundary, respectively. Behavioral and modeling results suggest that categorical (more abstract) information, which is more relevant to subjects’ decisions, is weighted more strongly than perceptual (more concrete) information, although they also have significant interactive effects on choice. Within the brain, BOLD activity within frontal regions strongly differentiated categorical salience and weakly differentiated perceptual salience; however, the interaction between these two factors activated similar frontoparietal brain networks. Notably, explicitly evaluating feature interactions revealed a frontal-parietal dissociation: parietal activity varied strongly with both features, but frontal activity varied with the combined strength of the information that defined the motor response. Together, these data demonstrate that frontal regions are driven by decision-relevant features and argue that perceptual decisions and rule-based categorization reflect similar cognitive processes and activate similar brain networks to the extent that they define decision-relevant stimulus-response mappings. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Here we study the behavioral and neural dynamics of perceptual categorization when decision information varies in multiple domains at different levels of abstraction. Behavioral and modeling results suggest that categorical (more abstract) information is weighted more strongly than perceptual (more concrete) information but that perceptual and categorical domains interact to influence decisions. Frontoparietal brain activity during categorization flexibly represents decision-relevant features and highlights significant dissociations in frontal and parietal activity during decision making.

scholarly journals Multiple brain networks contribute to the acquisition of bias in perceptual decision-making

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mei-Yen Chen ◽  
Koji Jimura ◽  
Corey N. White ◽  
W. Todd Maddox ◽  
Russell A. Poldrack
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Brain Networks ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision

scholarly journals Brain networks of perceptual decision-making: an fMRI ALE meta-analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max C. Keuken ◽  
Christa Müller-Axt ◽  
Robert Langner ◽  
Simon B. Eickhoff ◽  
Birte U. Forstmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Brain Networks ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision

scholarly journals Dissociable neural mechanisms track evidence accumulation for selection of attention versus action

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amitai Shenhav ◽  
Mark A. Straccia ◽  
Jonathan D. Cohen ◽  
Matthew M. Botvinick
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Stimulus Dimension ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractDecision-making is typically studied as a sequential process from the selection of what to attend (e.g., between possible tasks, stimuli, or stimulus attributes) to the selection of which actions to take based on the attended information. However, people often gather information across these levels in parallel. For instance, even as they choose their actions, they may continue to evaluate how much to attend other tasks or dimensions of information within a task. We scanned participants while they made such parallel evaluations, simultaneously weighing how much to attend two dynamic stimulus attributes and which response to give based on the attended information. Regions of prefrontal cortex tracked information about the stimulus attributes in dissociable ways, related to either the predicted reward (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) or the degree to which that attribute was being attended (dorsal anterior cingulate, dACC). Within dACC, adjacent regions tracked uncertainty at different levels of the decision, regarding what to attend versus how to respond. These findings bridge research on perceptual and value-based decision-making, demonstrating that people dynamically integrate information in parallel across different levels of decision making.Naturalistic decisions allow an individual to weigh their options within a particular task (e.g., how best to word the introduction to a paper) while also weighing how much to attend other tasks (e.g., responding to e-mails). These different types of decision-making have a hierarchical but reciprocal relationship: Decisions at higher levels inform the focus of attention at lower levels (e.g., whether to select between citations or email addresses) while, at the same time, information at lower levels (e.g., the salience of an incoming email) informs decisions regarding which task to attend. Critically, recent studies suggest that decisions across these levels may occur in parallel, continuously informed by information that is integrated from the environment and from one’s internal milieu1,2.Research on cognitive control and perceptual decision-making has examined how responses are selected when attentional targets are clearly defined (e.g., based on instruction to attend a stimulus dimension), including cases in which responding requires accumulating information regarding a noisy percept (e.g., evidence favoring a left or right response)3-7. Separate research on value-based decision-making has examined how individuals select which stimulus dimension(s) to attend in order to maximize their expected rewards8-11. However, it remains unclear how the accumulation of evidence to select high-level goals and/or attentional targets interacts with the simultaneous accumulation of evidence to select responses according to those goals (e.g., based on the perceptual properties of the stimuli). Recent work has highlighted the importance of such interactions to understanding task selection12-15, multi-attribute decision-making16-18, foraging behavior19-21, cognitive effort22,23, and self-control24-27.While these interactions remain poorly understood, previous research has identified candidate neural mechanisms associated with multi-attribute value-based decision-making11,28,29 and with selecting a response based on noisy information from an instructed attentional target3–5. These research areas have implicated the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in tracking the value of potential targets of attention (e.g., stimulus attributes)8,11 and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) in tracking an individual’s uncertainty regarding which response to select30–32. It has been further proposed that dACC may differentiate between uncertainty at each of these parallel levels of decision-making (e.g., at the level of task goals or strategies vs. specific motor actions), and that these may be separately encoded at different locations along the dACC’s rostrocaudal axis32,33. However, neural activity within and across these prefrontal regions has not yet been examined in a setting in which information is weighed at both levels within and across trials.Here we use a value-based perceptual decision-making task to examine how people integrate different dynamic sources of information to decide (a) which perceptual attribute to attend and (b) how to respond based on the evidence for that attribute. Participants performed a task in which they regularly faced a conflict between attending the stimulus attribute that offered the greater reward or the attribute that was more perceptually salient (akin to persevering in writing one’s paper when an enticing email awaits). We demonstrate that dACC and vmPFC track evidence for the two attributes in dissociable ways. Across these regions, vmPFC weighs attribute evidence by the reward it predicts and dACC weighs it by its attentional priority (i.e., the degree to which that attribute drives choice). Within dACC, adjacent regions differentiated between uncertainty at the two levels of the decision, regarding what to attend (rostral dACC) versus how to respond (caudal dACC).

Age-Related Differences in the Acquisition and Transfer of Perceptual Decision-Making Skills

1997 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria A. Spaulding ◽  
Donita A. Phipps
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Stress Conditions ◽  
Perceptual Task ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Time Stress ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Better Than

Younger and older participants were trained to perform a computerized football task. Half of the participants received rule-based training and the remainder received color enhancements in alternating blocks. Both younger and older adults improved RT performance, with the younger participants performing about twice as fast as the older participants. The participants transferred to Novel, Cluttered and Time-Stress conditions. The effect of training type (rules better than enhancements) failed to persist during transfer. Age-related impairments of RT and overall accuracy persisted during transfer, although older participants maintained a higher primary accuracy (except for Time-Stress). Their performance plummeted during the Time-Stress, but improved across the blocks. During the subsequent baseline block, primary accuracy returned to the pre-Cluttered level and RT slightly declined. These results suggest that the older participants changed strategies under time stress, and with more practice, their performance on this complex perceptual task may increase dramatically.

scholarly journals Corrigendum: Brain networks of perceptual decision-making: an fMRI ALE meta-analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max C. Keuken ◽  
Christa Müller-Axt ◽  
Robert Langner ◽  
Simon B. Eickhoff ◽  
Birte U. Forstmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Brain Networks ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision

scholarly journals Hierarchical dynamics of informational patterns and decision-making

2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1832) ◽  
pp. 20160475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Varona ◽  
Mikhail I. Rabinovich
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Cognitive Functions ◽  
Brain Networks ◽  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Hierarchical Networks ◽  
Suggested Approach ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Pattern Dynamics

Traditional studies on the interaction of cognitive functions in healthy and disordered brains have used the analyses of the connectivity of several specialized brain networks—the functional connectome. However, emerging evidence suggests that both brain networks and functional spontaneous brain-wide network communication are intrinsically dynamic. In the light of studies investigating the cooperation between different cognitive functions, we consider here the dynamics of hierarchical networks in cognitive space. We show, using an example of behavioural decision-making based on sequential episodic memory, how the description of metastable pattern dynamics underlying basic cognitive processes helps to understand and predict complex processes like sequential episodic memory recall and competition among decision strategies. The mathematical images of the discussed phenomena in the phase space of the corresponding cognitive model are hierarchical heteroclinic networks. One of the most important features of such networks is the robustness of their dynamics. Different kinds of instabilities of these dynamics can be related to ‘dynamical signatures’ of creativity and different psychiatric disorders. The suggested approach can also be useful for the understanding of the dynamical processes that are the basis of consciousness.

Tracking Men’s Perceptions of Women’s Sexual Interest

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-79
Author(s):  
Teresa A. Treat ◽  
Bob McMurray ◽  
Jodi R. Betty ◽  
Richard J. Viken
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Real World ◽  
Sexual Interest ◽  
College Men ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Affective Cues ◽  
On Line ◽  
Complex Decision ◽  
Real World Problems

Judging a woman’s current sexual interest in a specific man is a socially and emotionally complex decision. These judgments can be considered a form of perceptual decision-making in which men integrate both affective (emotional) and nonaffective cues. College men at risk of sexual aggression rely less on women’s affective cues and more on nonaffective cues, suggesting that cognitive processes may matter for real-world problems. However, in the real world, people may not have the luxury of waiting for processes to complete before they act. Recent work has used dynamic-competition models of decision-making to examine this problem. These models assume that affective judgments (such as interested vs. rejecting) are partially activated by multiple cues and compete over time. This work, in which mouse tracking is used to index partial decision states, demonstrates that on-line measures predict rape-supportive attitudes over and above off-line (judgment) measures. This offers a new way to understand the cognitive core of an important societal problem.

scholarly journals Advancing Methods and Mathematical Models of Perceptual Decision Making

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Tillman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Model Comparison ◽  
Predictive Accuracy ◽  
Sequential Sampling ◽  
Estimation Methods ◽  
Choice Response ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Sequential Sampling Models

In this thesis I argue that cognitive psychologists can use the combination of sequential sampling models, Bayesian estimation methods, and model comparison via predictive accuracy to investigate underlying cognitive processes of perceptual decision-making. I show that sequential sampling models of simple and choice response time allow for researchers to analyze behavioral data and translate them into the constitute components of processing, such as speed of processing, response caution, and the time needed for perceptual encoding and overt motor responses. I use these methods and models to investigate underlying mental processes related to cognitive load, speech perception, and lexical decision-making. I also show that using different sequential sampling models to analyze the same data can lead researchers to draw different conclusions about cognitive processes, which serves as a caution for carelessly using these models. I also present a novel method that researchers can use to observe cognitive processes unfold online during perceptual decision-making tasks. I then discuss a promising collaboration emerging between researchers in the field of mathematical modeling and neuroscience.

scholarly journals Dissociating Cognitive Processes During Ambiguous Information Processing in Perceptual Decision-Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir A. Maksimenko ◽  
Alexander Kuc ◽  
Nikita S. Frolov ◽  
Marina V. Khramova ◽  
Alexander N. Pisarchik ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Ambiguous Information ◽  
Perceptual Decision

Distractors Selectively Modulate Electrophysiological Markers of Perceptual Decisions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Shou-Han Zhou ◽  
Gerard Loughnane ◽  
Redmond O'Connell ◽  
Mark A. Bellgrove ◽  
Trevor T.-J. Chong
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Vertical Motion ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Motion Direction ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Early Processing ◽  
Dot Motion ◽  
Task Irrelevant

Abstract Current models of perceptual decision-making assume that choices are made after evidence in favor of an alternative accumulates to a given threshold. This process has recently been revealed in human electrophysiological (EEG) recordings, but an unresolved issue is how these neural mechanisms are modulated by competing, yet task-irrelevant, stimuli. In this study, we tested 20 healthy participants on a motion direction discrimination task. Participants monitored two patches of random dot motion simultaneously presented on either side of fixation for periodic changes in an upward or downward motion, which could occur equiprobably in either patch. On a random 50% of trials, these periods of coherent vertical motion were accompanied by simultaneous task-irrelevant, horizontal motion in the contralateral patch. Our data showed that these distractors selectively increased the amplitude of early target selection responses over scalp sites contralateral to the distractor stimulus, without impacting on responses ipsilateral to the distractor. Importantly, this modulation mediated a decrement in the subsequent buildup rate of a neural signature of evidence accumulation and accounted for a slowing of RTs. These data offer new insights into the functional interactions between target selection and evidence accumulation signals, and their susceptibility to task-irrelevant distractors. More broadly, these data neurally inform future models of perceptual decision-making by highlighting the influence of early processing of competing stimuli on the accumulation of perceptual evidence.

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