Botelho Catarina, Fernandes Carina, Campos Carlos, Seixas Carlos, Pasion Rita, Garcez Helena, Ferreira-Santos Fernando, Barbosa Fernando, Maques-Teixeira João, Paiva Tiago O
Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology, University of Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen, 4200-135, Porto, Portugal.
Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2023 Jun;23(3):522-542. doi: 10.3758/s13415-023-01101-8. Epub 2023 May 12.
Risk and uncertainty are central concepts of decision neuroscience. However, a comprehensive review of the literature shows that most studies define risk and uncertainty in an unclear fashion or use both terms interchangeably, which hinders the integration of the existing findings. We suggest uncertainty as an umbrella term that comprises scenarios characterized by outcome variance where relevant information about the type and likelihood of outcomes may be somewhat unavailable (ambiguity) and scenarios where the likelihood of outcomes is known (risk).These conceptual issues are problematic for studies on the temporal neurodynamics of decision-making under risk and ambiguity, because they lead to heterogeneity in task design and the interpretation of the results. To assess this problem, we conducted a state-of-the-art review of ERP studies on risk and ambiguity in decision-making. By employing the above definitions to 16 reviewed studies, our results suggest that: (a) research has focused more on risk than ambiguity processing; (b) studies assessing decision-making under risk often implemented descriptive-based paradigms, whereas studies assessing ambiguity processing equally implemented descriptive- and experience-based tasks; (c) descriptive-based studies link risk processing to increased frontal negativities (e.g., N2, N400) and both risk and ambiguity to reduced parietal positivities (e.g., P2, P3); (d) experience-based studies link risk to increased P3 amplitudes and ambiguity to increased frontal negativities and the LPC component; (e) both risk and ambiguity processing seem to be related with cognitive control, conflict monitoring, and increased cognitive demand; (f) further research and improved tasks are needed to dissociate risk and ambiguity processing.
风险和不确定性是决策神经科学的核心概念。然而，对文献的全面综述表明，大多数研究对风险和不确定性的定义不明确，或者将这两个术语互换使用，这阻碍了现有研究结果的整合。我们建议将不确定性作为一个总括性术语，它包括以下两种情况：一种是结果具有方差特征的情景，在这种情景中，关于结果类型和可能性的相关信息可能在一定程度上不可用（模糊性）；另一种是结果可能性已知的情景（风险）。这些概念问题对于风险和模糊性条件下决策的时间神经动力学研究来说是有问题的，因为它们导致了任务设计和结果解释的异质性。为了评估这个问题，我们对决策中风险和模糊性的ERP研究进行了一项前沿综述。通过将上述定义应用于16项综述研究，我们的结果表明：（a）研究更多地关注风险处理而非模糊性处理；（b）评估风险条件下决策的研究通常采用基于描述的范式，而评估模糊性处理的研究同样采用基于描述和基于经验的任务；（c）基于描述的研究将风险处理与额叶负波增加（如N2、N400）联系起来，将风险和模糊性都与顶叶正波减少（如P2、P3）联系起来；（d）基于经验的研究将风险与P3波幅增加联系起来，将模糊性与额叶负波增加和晚期正成分（LPC）联系起来；（e）风险和模糊性处理似乎都与认知控制、冲突监测以及认知需求增加有关；（f）需要进一步的研究和改进任务来区分风险和模糊性处理。
