Abstract
Making accurate judgments is a core human competence and a prerequisite for success in many areas of life. Plenty of evidence exists that people can employ different judgment strategies to solve identical judgment problems. In categorization, it has been demonstrated that similarity-based and rule-based strategies are associated with activity in different brain regions. Building on this research, the present work tests whether solving two identical judgment problems recruits different neural substrates depending on people's judgment strategies. Combining cognitive modeling of judgment strategies at the behavioral level with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compare brain activity when using two archetypal judgment strategies: a similarity-based exemplar strategy and a rule-based heuristic strategy. Using an exemplar-based strategy should recruit areas involved in long-term memory processes to a larger extent than a heuristic strategy. In contrast, using a heuristic strategy should recruit areas involved in the application of rules to a larger extent than an exemplar-based strategy. Largely consistent with our hypotheses, we found that using an exemplar-based strategy led to relatively higher BOLD activity in the anterior prefrontal and inferior parietal cortex, presumably related to retrieval and selective attention processes. In contrast, using a heuristic strategy led to relatively higher activity in areas in the dorsolateral prefrontal and the temporal-parietal cortex associated with cognitive control and information integration. Thus, even when people solve identical judgment problems, different neural substrates can be recruited depending on the judgment strategy involved.
Highlights
Making accurate judgments is an important human competence.Doctors and judges routinely make judgments that may decide whether someone lives or dies
We analyzed the behavioral judgments in the behavioral test phase and the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) test phase together to increase the reliability of the strategy assessment
Our results show activations in areas that have been frequently implicated in research on the neural substrates of complex judgments such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC)
Summary
Making accurate judgments is an important human competence.Doctors and judges routinely make judgments that may decide whether someone lives or dies. Little attention has been paid to the fact that identical judgment problems can be solved by different judgment strategies This implies that the variety in neural substrates underlying human judgments could result from different judgment strategies. The majority of imaging studies have largely ignored people’s strategies or focused on a single strategy (Zysset et al, 2006; Kahnt et al, 2011; Khader et al, 2011) This is surprising because a plethora of research in cognitive psychology suggests that people frequently adopt a variety of different strategies in cognitive tasks such as judgment, decision making or problem solving
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