BCS 111 Lecture 11

Higher-level cognition

Cost and benefits of making a decision

How do we make a decision?

• Weighing between cost a benefit

Utility maximization

Utility: the value you can get from an outcome

Reason-based choice

Are we always guided by the utility (value) of the choices?

• Justification of choice instead of maximizing utility

  • Need a “reason” for the decision

• Should I get married?

  • The value? The reason

The questions can also be framed

Should I get married?

• look for advantages of marriage

• look for a reason for the decision of getting married

Should I not get married?

• Look for disadvantages of marriage or advantages of being single

• look for a reason for the decision of NOT getting married

Reasoning and decision making

What’s the rationale of solving hard problem first on an exam

Deductively

• All difficult problems are time-consuming.

• All problems requiring elaborate thinking are the difficult ones.

  • All time-consuming problems require elaborate thinking. (?)

Inductively

Hypothesis testing

• Solving hard problems first might improve my grade

Reasoning and decision making

Decision making process is more complicated than we thought

1. Understand the problem (reasoning: deductive and/or inductive)

2. Set a goal and formulate hypotheses

3. Brainstorm possible solutions (various problem-solving strategies)

4. Weigh cost and benefit

5. Final decision

The Disease Problem (1)

The Disease Problem (2)

Summary

Monetary reward problem (1)

Assume yourself richer by $300 than you are today. You have to choose between:
A. A sure gain of $100
B. 50% chance to gain $200 and 50% chance to gain nothing

Which option will you choose?

Monetary reward problem (2)

Assume yourself richer by $300 than you are today. You have to choose between:
A. A sure loss of $100
B. 50% chance to lose nothing and 50% chance to lose $200
Which option will you choose?

Monetary reward problem

Tversky & Kahneman (1987)

• In version (1), 72% chose Program A over B.

• In version (2), 64% chose B over A.

  • What causes this difference?

Framing of outcomes

• Version (1): positively framed (# of people being saved)

  • Conservative decision

• Version(2): negatively framed (# of people died)

  • Risky decision

• Framing of outcomes: Influence of language on thinking!! Also supports linguistic relativism!

Decision making in investment

Assessment of risk and return

• High risk but high gains?

• Low risk and low gains?

One way to test decision making in investment:

• Risk Perception and Investment Decision (RPID) task (Mohr et al., 2010)

An fMRI study of decision making in investment

• Subjective value (expected return – risk) is highly correlated with activities in various regions in the prefrontal cortex.

• Perceived risk is highly correlated with activities in aINS (anterior Insula)

Decision making in gambling

• Another way to test decision making and risky behavior: the Iowa Gambling Task or “IGT” (Bechara et al. 1994; Verdejo-Garcia et al. 2007)

  • 4 decks of card: Subjects pick one card at a time from any deck

  • Predetermined order of cards and gains/losses in each deck

  • Some decks are riskier, while others are “safer”

Substance abuse and decision making

• Balloon task: marijuana users vs. non-users (controls)

• MJ users took a riskier approach than controls.

• High number of popped balloons in Block 1: Why??

  • Exploring/trying the task to maximize outcome

Substance abuse and decision making

• Each block = select 20 cards

• Why no diff. among 3 groups in block 5?

Emotion control and decision making

Emotion control
• Impaired orbitofrontal cortex → impaired emotion control → riskier decision

Other factors affecting decision making

Age

• Younger → riskier decisions?

• Older → more conservative decisions?

Other factors affecting decision making

Age

• Negative correlation between age and cognitive functions (memory, processing speed)

• Leading to negative correlation between age and quality of decision making (Henninger et al. 2010) (due to cognitive aging)

Another factor affecting decision-making: stress/pressure

Recognition-primed decision (RPD) (Klein,
1989, 1993)- Key concepts:

• Decision “primed” by recognition of a situation:

  • If familiar:

    • Quickly select an action (instead of planning first) sometimes based on intuition

  • If unfamiliar:

    • Reassess/Seek more info

• Mental simulation of the selected action: experience needed in order to “imagine” the possible outcomes

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Decision making in children

What about children? How do children make decisions?

• Rational?

• Reason-based?

• Utility-maximization?

Before fully developing the above mechanisms, they rely on something else: environmental reliability (or credibility)

Children decision-making: Kidd, Palmeri & Aslin (2013)

(cont)

• Phase 1: manipulate reliability

Choice 1:

• Reliable condition: a sealed jar of crayons; promised to bring a fancy set of art supplies if children can wait

• Unreliable condition: return without the promised supplies

(cont 2)

Phase 1: manipulate reliability Choice 2 (not a manipulation; just another choice):

• Reliable condition: a pack of stickers; promised to bring another better pack if they can wait

• Unreliable condition: return without the promised stickers

Phase 2 

Marshmallow task
“…You can eat this one marshmallow right now. Or—if you can wait for me to go get more marshmallows from the other room [15 mins]—you can have two marshmallows to eat instead… I’ll leave this [marshmallow] here, and if you haven’t eaten it when I come back, you can have two marshmallows instead!”

Marshmallow task

• What will the results look like if environmental reliability plays no role in this task?

• i.e. What if “self-control” was the main factor influencing young children’s decision making?

  • Then both bars would be low

    • Therefore, it is not self control

Decision making wrap-up: three main mechanisms

Wrap up: Decision making

Highly interacts with reasoning and problem
solving

• E.g., reasoning of the problem at hand in order to form a decision

• E.g. forming hypotheses deductively and inductively before making a decision (e.g. solving easy vs. hard problems first on an exam)

• Framing of outcomes as evidence for linguistic relativism

• Higher amount of substance abuse as well as emotional disorder can lead to riskier behavior and decisions