The effects of psychological pressure on perceptual decision-making
Poster No:
615
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Kanae Ogasawara1, Takahiko Koike1
Institutions:
1RIKEN, Wako, Japan
First Author:
Co-Author:
Introduction:
"Choking under pressure" or simply "choking" refers to the performance decrements under excessively high psychological pressure (Baumeister, 1984). While many previous studies have focused on choking during motor tasks, our previous study showed that not only motor-related regions, but also visual areas are associated with choking during visuomotor coordination task (Ogasawara et al., in press). In addition, choking has also been reported in cognitive tasks (e.g., reward-based decision making: Byrne et al., 2015; working memory tasks: Sosnowski et al., 2022). Considering these points, it is possible that high pressure disrupts not only motor execution, but also sensory and decision-making neural processes. In this study, we used fMRI to investigate the mechanisms and neural substrates of choking in perceptual decision-making. We hypothesized that the effects of psychological pressure would be depicted in the sensory areas.
Methods:
We used an eight-direction random dot motion task (Gold & Shadlen, 2007; Pilly & Seitz, 2009). High pressure conditions were induced by a "Jackpot condition" defined by high reward with low frequency (Ogasawara et al., in press; Smoulder et al., 2021). Each trial began with a cue indicating the condition (Jackpot or other conditions), followed by the random dot motion task. In the random dot motion task, participants judged the direction of dot motion. Behavioral experiments were conducted first, followed by MRI experiments using the same paradigm. Following our previous study (Ogasawara et al., in press), brain activity during the condition presentation phase and the random dot stimulus phase were analyzed separately to examine pressure-induced modulations of brain activation.
Results:
Behavioral results showed that the correct rate was significantly lower in the Jackpot condition compared to the other conditions (Fig. 1), indicating that choking occurred even during the perceptual decision-making task. In the MRI experiments, we examined Jackpot-specific activation during the condition presentation phase. The analysis revealed that widespread brain areas were activated during the condition presentation phase, including the frontal cortex to the cerebellum. Further analysis divided participants into two groups: the Choker group, who showed a lower correct rate in the Jackpot condition, and the Clutcher group, who performed better in the Jackpot condition. A two-sample t-test revealed that the Choker group had significantly higher Jackpot-specific activity in the middle temporal visual area (hMT+), supplementary motor area, frontal eye fields, amygdala, middle temporal gyrus, temporal pole, brainstem, and hippocampus compared to the Clutcher group (Fig. 2). The hMT+ is a brain region that responds to visual motion stimuli and is associated with task execution (Tootell et al., 1995). Therefore, the activation of hMT+ as one of the specific brain activations in the Choker group was consistent with our hypothesis. In contrast, the Clutcher group showed greater activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and temporal pole. These findings suggest that individuals who tend to choke may show excessive activity in the hMT+ during the condition presentation phase of the Jackpot condition due to predicting responses to visual stimuli in the random dot motion task. This hyperactivity may lead to sensory modulation, ultimately resulting in a decreased correct rate.
·Figure 1. Correct rate of random dot motion stimuli in behavior experiments.
·Figure 2. The activation was specific to the Jackpot condition during the condition presentation phase in the choker group compared to the clutcher group.
Conclusions:
This study showed that choking occurs during perceptual decision-making tasks. Furthermore, as a mechanism of choking in perceptual decision-making, excessive activation in the hMT+ before viewing the random dot motion stimuli may disrupt sensory processing, leading to errors in the perceptual decision-making task.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotional Perception 1
Emotion and Motivation Other
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Decision Making
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI 2
Keywords:
Anxiety
Emotions
FUNCTIONAL MRI
MRI
Perception
Other - Choking
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Provide references using APA citation style.
Byrne, K. A. et al. (2015). Who chokes under pressure? The Big Five personality traits and decision-making under pressure. Personality and individual differences, 74, 22-28.
Gold, J. I. et al. (2007). The neural basis of decision making. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 30(1), 535-574.
Ogasawara, K. et al. (in press). Neural substrates of choking under pressure: A 7T-fMRI study. Neuroscience Research.
Pilly, P. K. et al. (2009). What a difference a parameter makes: A psychophysical comparison of random dot motion algorithms. Vision research, 49(13), 1599-1612.
Smoulder, A. L. et al. (2021). Monkeys exhibit a paradoxical decrease in performance in high-stakes scenarios. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(35), e2109643118.
Sosnowski, M. J. et al. (2022). Endogenous cortisol correlates with performance under pressure on a working memory task in capuchin monkeys. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 953.
Tootell, R. B. et al. (1995). Functional analysis of human MT and related visual cortical areas using magnetic resonance imaging. Journal of Neuroscience, 15(4), 3215-3230.