Saha Roy Tiasha, Giri Bapun, Saha Chowdhury Arpita, Mazumder Satyaki, Das Koel
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, Mohanpur, India.
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Front Neurosci. 2020 Jan 14;13:1371. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2019.01371. eCollection 2019.
Understanding how individuals utilize social information while making perceptual decisions and how it affects their decision confidence is crucial in a society. To date, very little has been known about perceptual decision-making in humans and the associated neural mediators under social influence. The present study provides empirical evidence of how individuals are manipulated by others' decisions while performing a face/car identification task. Subjects were significantly influenced by what they perceived as the decisions of other subjects, while the cues, in reality, were manipulated independently from the stimulus. Subjects, in general, tend to increase their decision confidence when their individual decision and the cues coincide, while their confidence decreases when cues conflict with their individual judgments, often leading to reversal of decision. Using a novel statistical model, it was possible to rank subjects based on their propensity to be influenced by cues. This was subsequently corroborated by an analysis of their neural data. Neural time series analysis revealed no significant difference in decision-making using social cues in the early stages, unlike neural expectation studies with predictive cues. Multivariate pattern analysis of neural data alludes to a potential role of the frontal cortex in the later stages of visual processing, which appeared to code the effect of cues on perceptual decision-making. Specifically, the medial frontal cortex seems to play a role in facilitating perceptual decision preceded by conflicting cues.
了解个体在做出感知决策时如何利用社会信息以及这如何影响他们的决策信心，在社会中至关重要。迄今为止，对于社会影响下人类的感知决策以及相关神经调节因素，人们知之甚少。本研究提供了个体在执行面部/汽车识别任务时如何受到他人决策影响的实证证据。受试者受到他们所认为的其他受试者决策的显著影响，而实际上这些线索是独立于刺激进行操纵的。一般来说，当个体决策与线索一致时，受试者往往会提高他们的决策信心，而当线索与他们的个体判断冲突时，他们的信心会下降，这通常会导致决策的逆转。使用一种新颖的统计模型，可以根据受试者受线索影响的倾向对他们进行排名。随后通过对他们神经数据的分析得到了证实。神经时间序列分析显示，与使用预测性线索的神经预期研究不同，在早期阶段使用社会线索进行决策时没有显著差异。对神经数据的多变量模式分析表明，额叶皮质在视觉处理的后期阶段可能发挥作用，它似乎编码了线索对感知决策的影响。具体而言，内侧额叶皮质似乎在促进由冲突线索引发的感知决策中发挥作用。
