Sullivan Nicolette, Hutcherson Cendri, Harris Alison, Rangel Antonio
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology.
Psychol Sci. 2015 Feb;26(2):122-34. doi: 10.1177/0956797614559543. Epub 2014 Dec 16.
We propose that self-control failures, and variation across individuals in self-control abilities, are partly due to differences in the speed with which the decision-making circuitry processes basic attributes, such as tastiness, versus more abstract attributes, such as healthfulness. We tested these hypotheses by combining a dietary-choice task with a novel form of mouse tracking that allowed us to pinpoint when different attributes were being integrated into the choice process with temporal resolution at the millisecond level. We found that, on average, tastiness was processed about 195 ms earlier than healthfulness during the choice process. We also found that 13% to 39% of observed individual differences in self-control ability could be explained by differences in the relative speed with which tastiness and healthfulness were processed.
我们认为，自我控制失败以及个体间自我控制能力的差异，部分归因于决策回路处理基本属性（如美味程度）与更抽象属性（如健康程度）的速度差异。我们通过将饮食选择任务与一种新型的鼠标追踪形式相结合来检验这些假设，这种鼠标追踪形式使我们能够以毫秒级的时间分辨率精确确定不同属性何时被整合到选择过程中。我们发现，在选择过程中，美味程度的处理平均比健康程度早约195毫秒。我们还发现，观察到的自我控制能力个体差异中有13%至39%可以通过美味程度和健康程度处理的相对速度差异来解释。
