The Cognitive And Neural Mechanism Of Negative Feedback’s Regulation On Decision-Making Confidence

Decision-making confidence refers to the individuals’ degree of confidence about the correctness and optimality of decision and confidence is an essential ingredient in the decision-making process. Decision-making confidence is a product of the decision-making process, decision-making confidence will be counterproductive in the decision-making process, feedback is one of the important factors of decision-making confidence. Some researchers suggested that decision-making confidence is an important bridge links cognition and emotion in decision-making process, the decision-making confidence in-depth study not only of high scientific value, but also has important practical significance. Researchers have launched a lot of researches from cognitive to neural mechanisms, but many studies have focused on the cognitive and neural generation mechanisms of decision-making confidence, few studies have focused on dynamic changes in the decision-making confidence, their cognitive and neural mechanisms are not very clear. Therefore, this study focuses on the dynamic changes of the decision-making confidence, and researches on the dimension of confidence dynamically reduce. We use behavioral experiment and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and perception decision task, the experimental task uses the combination of confidence assessment after decision-making and confidence assessment in decision-making paradigm, study two questions:(1) the cognitive mechanisms of the negative feedback and importance’s regulation on decision-making confidence; (2) the neural mechanism of the negative feedback’s regulation on decision-making confidence. Therefore, this study conducted two experiments, the results are as follows.The first experiment is behavioral experiment, the object of study is 60 students (27 male,33 female), investigates the cognitive mechanisms of the negative feedback and importance’s regulation on decision-making confidence, behavior result show that (1) The decision confidence reduces by negative feedback, the difference between initial confidence and give-up confidence increases with the number of negative feedback, in the low-importance and middle-importance condition, the negative feedback’s regression analysis on confidence adjustment is significant(regression equation see 3.2.1), the explanation is R2=0.329(low-importance), R2=0.342(middle-importance); (2) The importance and gender interactions significantly affect the number of negative feedback (N, the number of negative feedback when "to accept or give up?" decision-making deflects, F (2,116)= 6.232, P= 0.01) and the give-up threshold (P, confidence when decision-making deflects, F (2,116)= 3.698, P= 0.046), the importance significantly impacts the number of negative feedback (F (2,116)= 90.037, P<0.001) and the give-up threshold (F (2,116)= 15.322, P<0.001), the negative feedback number increases with the increase of importance (male:Nlow=1.690, Nmiddle=2.905, Nhigh=5.413; women:Nlow=1.738, Nmiddle=2.618, Nhigh=3.952), and the importance is higher, the give-up threshold is lower (male:Plow=64.65%, Pmiddle=60.15%, Phigh=50.45%;women:Plow=62.63%, Pmiddle=59.15%, Phigh=57.68%), in high-importance condition, male’s acceptable negative feedback was significantly higher than female’s, male’s give-up threshold is significantly lower than female’s; (3) Logistic regression was used on "accept/give-up" decision to establish the prediction model, the number of negative feedback, the importance, decision-making confidence, and gender are effective variables in the model (4.2.1), the model pseudo-coefficient of determination Nagelkerke R2=0.306, the correct rate of prediction is 73.3%, good diagnostic value (under the ROC curve area of 0.8<S= 0.853<0.9), fit well (X2=9.979, df=8,P=0.266> 0.05).The second experiment is fMRI experiment, the object of study is 13 students (6 male,7 female), investigates the neural mechanism of the negative feedback’s regulation on decision-making confidence, behavior results show that (1) Negative feedback significantly influence the decision-making confidence (F (3,36)=28.963, P<0.001) and "accept/give-up" decision’s pass% (F (3,36)= 89.524, P<0.001), decision-making confidence decreases with the increase of the number of negative feedback, the pass% increases with the increase of the number of negative feedback; (2) Logistic regression was used on "accept/give-up" decision to establish the prediction model, the number of negative feedback and decision-making confidence are effective variables in the model (4.2.1), the model pseudo-coefficient of determination Nagelkerke R2= 0.498, the correct rate of prediction is 86.2%, good diagnostic value (under the ROC curve area of 0.8< S=0.892<0.9), fit well (X2=6.704, df=8, P=0.569>0.05). fMRI results show that (1) The negative feedback’s regulation on the dynamic change of decision-making confidence activates some brain regions, the right side of the top lobule (BA40), left/right precuneus (BA19/6), right middle frontal gyrus(BA9), left/right side of the anterior cingulate cortex (BA32/31) and other brain areas, all of these areas are positive activation, anterior cingulate cortex and inferior parietal lobule may be sensitive brain regions of negative feedback’s regulation of confidence; (2) We performed a whole-brain regression analysis between the neural decision confidence and behavioral waiving rate (accept/give up decision pass%), result shows that the left superior parietal lobule (BA7) and right inferior parietal lobule (BA40), rightback on the side of the amount of (BA6), right side of the cingulate gyrus (ACC, BA24), left side of precuneus (BA31) and right medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC, BA6) and pass% have significant regression analysis, the activation in left superior parietal lobule and right medial prefrontal cortex are possible to predict follow-up decision-making behavior.On the whole of the first and second experiments’results, we summarize that (1) The feedback factor (negative feedback), the nature of decision (importance) factors, and decision-maker (gender) factors work together in the dynamically change process of decision-making confidence, the feedback factor (negative feedback) may be work as an intermediate variable to regulate the influence of the nature of decision (importance) and decision-maker (gender) factors; (2) The anterior cingulate cortex and inferior parietal may be the important brain regions in the dynamic change of decision-making confidence which is regulated by negative feedback, the activation data of right medial prefrontal and left inferior parietal lobule have a high explanation of subsequent behavior data pass%, these two brain regions may be the sensitive brain regions of the dynamic change of decision-making confidence, may be able to predict the subsequent decision-making behaviors.