一味坚持还是灵活变换：换牌频率的神经结构基础和认知机制
摘要
<p id="C2">Decision making is a common, frequent and important task. It is not uniform though; there are individual differences in decision making processes. One notable differences between decision makers is in repeated binary choice situations. Specifically, when facing repeated binary choices, some people keep choosing the same option while others often switch. Previous research used a random card guessing task to explore the underlying mechanism of such differences in choice strategy. In this task, participants are asked to match a computer-generated “random” choice of a black or red card. The computer does not follow a random choice pattern; it follows a canonical random sequence generated by a Bernoulli process characterized by an equal numbers of black and red choices, switch of color on half of the trials, and streak length following an exponential distribution. In theory, participants should guess cards randomly. Nevertheless, they switch significantly less often than the computer does. In other words, participants present some change resistance and have an increased likelihood to select the same card; this likelihood varies among participants. One notable gap in this research stream pertains to the underlying cognitive and neural mechanism of such card switching behaviors. We partially address this gap in this study <p id="C2-1">Three hundred and fifty healthy Chinese college students (194 females, mean age = 19.97 years) were recruited for this study. All of them completed the Card Guessing Task, the Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised (TCI-R), and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). One session of high-resolution magnetic resonance anatomical image was also acquired for each individual using a 3T MRI scanner. First, subjects’ frequency of switching, persistence error on the WCST as an index for cognitive flexibility, and persistence dimension score on TCI-R were calculated. Next, the correlation between gray matter volume (GMV) and frequency