STUDU OF DECISION-MAKING PROCESS IN HIERARCHICAL DECISIONS: A BEHAVIORAL STUDY

Background and Aim: Decision-making is the act of choosing one option from a set of alternatives. The brain can make several decisions at once. The decision-making process will be hierarchical in the brain. In these cases, the outcome will depend on the hierarchical interaction of the sub judgments. The important point in this type of decision-making is that if the decision is not made at the right level, the decision-maker will receive negative feedback. Since the identification of the correct strategy is deduced from the results of low-level decisions, the cause of the negative feedback is unclear. High-level decisions change without warning, disrupting the relationship between low-level choices and an existing strategy That causing the ambiguity of negative feedback not easily resolved. To resolve the ambiguity of negative feedback, we need to have enough information about the relationship between the different levels of the hierarchy. Methods: The psychophysics experiment is designed and constructed to collect behavioral data in Matlab (Psychtoolbox). The experiment consists of simultaneously detecting the direction of random dot motion (left or right) and selecting an environment (up or down). The experiments were conducted in a semi-dark room. Each experiment was performed by each subject in four blocks, each block containing ۲۰۰ trails. The information is stored in a recoverable file in Matlab software. In addition to recording the behavioral data, the subject reported his/her Confidence about the Direction of moving points. Results: Behavioral data have been analyzed to understand how hierarchical decision-making is formed in the human brain and how information is processed hierarchically. Since high-level decisions have three characteristics of negative feedback, Confidence, and Motion strength. Behavioral data analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between accuracy, Confidence and response time with Motion strength and the effect of the Consecutive errors on strategy change. Conclusion: The Motion strength in the current trial is related to the probability of correctly selecting the points. The number of negative feedbacks associated with the Motion strength in previous experiments is important factors in the formation of correct changes due to the high-level decision environment. After receiving negative feedback, the subject tends to change the environment when the environment has not changed for a long time, meaning that the number of experiments affects the likelihood of selecting the environment correctly.

کلیدواژه ها:

Psychophysics-Experiment ، Hierarchical-Decision-Making ، Behavioral Data