Terbeck Sylvia, Chesterman Paul, Fischmeister Florian Ph S, Leodolter Ulrich, Bauer Herbert
Department of Clinical, Biological and Differential Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, A-1010 Vienna, Austria.
J Neurosci Methods. 2008 Aug 15;173(1):13-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2008.05.011. Epub 2008 May 23.
Attribution theory plays a central role in understanding cognitive processes that have emotional consequences; however, there has been very limited attention to its neural basis. After reviewing classical studies in social psychology in which attribution has been experimentally manipulated we developed a new approach that allows the investigation of state attributions and emotional consequences using neuroscience methodologies. Participants responded to the Erikson Flanker Task, but, in order to maintain the participant's beliefs about the nature of the task and to produce a significant number of error responses, an adaptive algorithm tuned the available time to respond such that, dependent on the subject's current performance, the negative feedback rate was held at chance level. In order to initiate variation in attribution participants were informed that one and the same task was either easy or difficult. As a result of these two different instructions the two groups differed significantly in error attribution only on the locus of causality dimension. Additionally, attributions were found to be stable over a large number of trials, while accuracy and reaction time remained the same. Thus, the new paradigm is particularly suitable for cognitive neuroscience research that evaluates brain behaviour relationships of higher order processes in 'simulated achievement settings'.
归因理论在理解具有情感后果的认知过程中起着核心作用；然而，对其神经基础的关注非常有限。在回顾了社会心理学中对归因进行实验操纵的经典研究后，我们开发了一种新方法，该方法允许使用神经科学方法来研究状态归因和情感后果。参与者对埃里克森侧翼任务做出反应，但是，为了保持参与者对任务性质的信念并产生大量错误反应，一种自适应算法调整了可用的反应时间，以便根据受试者当前的表现，将负面反馈率保持在随机水平。为了引发归因的变化，参与者被告知同一个任务要么容易要么困难。由于这两种不同的指示，两组仅在因果关系维度的归因上存在显著差异。此外，发现在大量试验中归因是稳定的，而准确性和反应时间保持不变。因此，新范式特别适合在“模拟成就环境”中评估高阶过程的脑行为关系的认知神经科学研究。
