Value based decisions are among the most common types of decisions made by humans. A considerable body of work has investigated how different types of information guide such decisions, as well as how evaluations of their outcomes retroactively inform the parameters that were used to inform them. Several open questions remain regarding the nature of the underlying representations of decision-relevant information. Of particular relevance is whether or not positive and negative information (i.e. rewards/gains vs. punishments/losses/costs) are treated as categorically distinct, or whether they are represented on a common scale. This question was examined across three different studies utilizing a variety of methods (traditional event-related potentials, multivariate pattern classification, and eye tracking) to obtain a more comprehensive picture of how decision-relevant information is represented A common theme among the three studies was that positive and negative types of information seems to be, at least initially, represented as categorically distinct (whether it be information about gains vs. losses, or value vs. effort). Additionally, integration of different types of information appears to take place during the later phases of the decision period, which may also be when distortions in the representation of value information (ex. loss aversion) may occur. Overall, this body of work advances our understanding of the underpinnings of value based decisions by providing additional insight about how decision-relevant information is represented in a dynamic and flexible manner.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uoregon.edu/oai:scholarsbank.uoregon.edu:1794/23733 |
| Date | 06 September 2018 |
| Creators | Morales, Pablo |
| Contributors | Mayr, Ulrich |
| Publisher | University of Oregon |
| Source Sets | University of Oregon |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Rights | All Rights Reserved. |
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