a multiple-choice task with changes of mind多项选择题的任务与心灵的变化.pdfVIP

A Multiple-Choice Task with Changes of Mind 1,2 1 1,3 1,3 Larissa Albantakis *, Francesca M. Branzi , Albert Costa , Gustavo Deco 1 Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, 2 Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, ´ Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, 3 Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avanc¸ats (ICREA), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain Abstract The role of changes of mind and multiple choices has recently received increased attention in the study of perceptual decision-making. Previously, these extensions to standard two-alternative tasks have been studied separately. Here we explored how changes of mind depend on the number of choice-alternatives. To this end, we tested 14 human subjects on a 2- and 4-alternative direction-discrimination task. Changes of mind in the participants’ movement trajectories could be observed for two and for four choice alternatives. With fewer alternatives, participants responded faster and more accurately. The frequency of changes of mind, however, did not significantly differ for the different numbers of choice alternatives. Nevertheless, mind-changing improved the participants’ final performance, particularly for intermediate difficulty levels, in both experimental conditions. Moreover, the mean reaction times of individual participants were negatively correlated with their overall tendency to make changes of mind. We further reproduced these findings with a multi-alternative