Del Missier Fabio, Visentini Mimì, Mäntylä Timo
Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste Trieste, Italy ; Department of Psychology, Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden.
Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste Trieste, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2015 Jan 22;5:1584. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01584. eCollection 2014.
According to prescriptive decision theories, the generation of options for choice is a central aspect of decision making. A too narrow representation of the problem may indeed limit the opportunity to evaluate promising options. However, despite the theoretical and applied significance of this topic, the cognitive processes underlying option generation are still unclear. In particular, while a cued recall account of option generation emphasizes the role of memory and executive control, other theoretical proposals stress the importance of ideation processes based on various search and thinking processes. Unfortunately, relevant behavioral evidence on the cognitive processes underlying option generation is scattered and inconclusive. In order to reach a better understanding, we carried out an individual-differences study employing a wide array of cognitive predictors, including measures of episodic memory, semantic memory, cognitive control, and ideation fluency. The criterion tasks consisted of three different poorly-structured decision-making scenarios, and the participants were asked to generate options to solve these problems. The main criterion variable of the study was the number of valid options generated, but also the diversity and the quality of generated options were examined. The results showed that option generation fluency and diversity in the context of ill-structured decision making are supported by ideation ability even after taking into account the effects of individual differences in several other aspects of cognitive functioning. Thus, ideation processes, possibly supported by search and thinking processes, seem to contribute to option generation beyond basic associative memory retrieval. The findings of the study also indicate that generating more options may have multifaceted consequences for choice, increasing the quality of the best option generated but decreasing the mean quality of the options in the generated set.
根据规范性决策理论，生成可供选择的选项是决策的核心环节。对问题的表述过于狭隘确实可能限制评估有前景选项的机会。然而，尽管该主题具有理论和应用意义，但选项生成背后的认知过程仍不清楚。具体而言，虽然关于选项生成的线索回忆理论强调记忆和执行控制的作用，但其他理论观点则强调基于各种搜索和思维过程的构思过程的重要性。不幸的是，关于选项生成背后认知过程的相关行为证据分散且尚无定论。为了更好地理解，我们开展了一项个体差异研究，采用了一系列认知预测指标，包括情景记忆、语义记忆、认知控制和构思流畅性的测量。标准任务由三种不同的结构不良的决策情景组成，要求参与者生成解决这些问题的选项。该研究的主要标准变量是生成的有效选项数量，同时也考察了生成选项的多样性和质量。结果表明，即使考虑到认知功能其他几个方面的个体差异影响，在结构不良的决策背景下，选项生成的流畅性和多样性仍受到构思能力的支持。因此，可能由搜索和思维过程支持的构思过程似乎在基本联想记忆检索之外对选项生成有所贡献。该研究的结果还表明，生成更多选项可能对选择产生多方面的影响，提高所生成最佳选项的质量，但降低所生成选项集中选项的平均质量。
