Raposo Ana, Frade Sofia, Alves Mara, Marques J Frederico
Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, 1649-013 Lisboa, Portugal.
Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, 1649-013 Lisboa, Portugal.
Brain Cogn. 2018 Aug;125:157-164. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2018.07.005. Epub 2018 Jul 11.
People are often confronted with the need of estimating the market price of goods. An important question is how people estimate prices, given the variability of products and prices available. Using event-related fMRI, we investigated how numerical processing modulates the neural bases of retail price estimation by focusing on two numerical dimensions: the size and precision of the estimates. Participants were presented with several product labels and made market price estimates for those products. Measures of product buying frequency and market price variability were also collected. The estimation of higher prices required longer response times, was associated with greater variation in responses across participants, and correlated with increasing medial and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity. Moreover, price estimates followed Weber's law, a hallmark feature of numerical processing. Increasing accuracy in price estimation, indexed by decreasing Weber fraction, engaged the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), a critical region in numerical processing. Our findings provide evidence for distinguishable neural mechanisms associated with the size and the precision of price estimates.
人们常常面临估计商品市场价格的需求。一个重要的问题是，鉴于产品和价格的多样性，人们如何估计价格。利用事件相关功能磁共振成像技术，我们通过关注两个数值维度：估计值的大小和精度，研究了数值处理如何调节零售价格估计的神经基础。向参与者展示了几个产品标签，并让他们对这些产品进行市场价格估计。还收集了产品购买频率和市场价格变异性的测量数据。估计较高价格需要更长的反应时间，与参与者之间反应的更大差异相关，并与内侧和外侧前额叶皮质（PFC）活动的增加相关。此外，价格估计遵循韦伯定律，这是数值处理的一个标志性特征。以韦伯分数降低为指标的价格估计准确性的提高，激活了顶内沟（IPS），这是数值处理中的一个关键区域。我们的研究结果为与价格估计的大小和精度相关的可区分神经机制提供了证据。
