Intuitive decision making as a gradual process: investigating semantic intuition‐based and priming‐based decisions with fMRI

Abstract

IntroductionIntuition has been defined as the instantaneous, experience‐based impression of coherence elicited by cues in the environment. In a context of discovery, intuitive decision‐making processes can be conceptualized as occurring within two stages, the first of which comprises an implicit perception of coherence that is not (yet) verbalizable. Through a process of spreading activation, this initially non‐conscious perception gradually crosses over a threshold of awareness and thereby becomes explicable. Because of its experiential basis, intuition shares conceptual similarities with implicit memory processes. Based on these, the study addresses two research questions: (1) Is the gradual nature of intuitive processes reflected on a neural level? (2) Do intuition‐based decisions differ neurally from priming‐based decisions?MethodsTo answer these questions, we conducted an fMRI study using the triads task and presented participants with coherent word triads that converge on a common fourth concept, and incoherent word triads that do not converge on a common fourth concept. Participants had to perform semantic coherence judgments as well as to indicate whether they immediately knew the fourth concept. To enable investigating intuition‐based and priming‐based decisions within the same task and with the same participants, we implemented a conceptual priming procedure into the coherence judgment task. We realized this by priming participants with concepts associated with incoherent triads in separate priming blocks prior to the coherence judgments.ResultsFor intuition‐based decisions, imaging results mainly revealed activity within the orbitofrontal cortex, within the inferior frontal gyrus and the middle temporal gyrus. Activity suppression in the right temporo‐occipital complex was observed for priming‐based decisions.ConclusionsWith respect to research question 1, our data support a continuity model of intuition because the two intuitive stages show quantitatively distinct brain activation patterns. Regarding research question 2, we can draw the preliminary conclusion of a qualitative difference between intuition‐based and priming‐based decisions.

Intuition and Insight: Two Processes That Build on Each Other or Fundamentally Differ?

“…In other words, people were intuitively sensitized to the detection of coherence prior to its explicit recognition (i.e., before having an explicit insight into the underlying semantic structure). Using a similar task, which consists of up to 15 semantically target-related clue words (i.e., the Accumulated Clues Task), it could be observed that participants continuously approached the explicit representation of environmental patterns/meaning ( Bowers et al, 1990 ; Reber et al, 2007 ), which could be recently also demonstrated on a neuronal level when using the semantic coherence task ( Zander et al, 2015 ). These results are perfectly in line with Bowers et al (1990) definition of intuition and the corresponding gradual two-stage model.…”

“… Bowers et al (1990) approach is not only theoretically important it also carries paradigmatic weight. In order to empirically test their model’s assumptions, the authors developed several novel paradigms (verbal as well as perceptual ones), which today, after slight revisions, belong to the standard paradigms of intuition research (e.g., Bolte and Goschke, 2005 ; Volz and von Cramon, 2006 ; Topolinski and Strack, 2009b ; Hicks et al, 2010 ; Remmers et al, 2014 ; Zander et al, 2015 ). One of them is the semantic coherence task mentioned above, consisting of word triads that can be either semantically coherent (e.g., SALT, DEEP, and FOAM) or incoherent (DREAM; BALL; BOOK).…”

Scrutinizing the Emotional Nature of Intuitive Coherence Judgments

“…The semantic coherence task (i.e., the triads task) used in this study dates back to Bowers et al (1990) and has been frequently used to study intuitive processing (e.g., Bolte & Goschke, 2005;Remmers et al, 2014;Topolinski & Strack, 2009a;Zander et al, 2015). For each trial of the task, participants were presented with word triads (i.e., three words at once presented below each other) that-unbeknownst to them-could be either semantically coherent or incoherent.…”

Intuition and metacognition: The effect of semantic coherence on judgments of learning

“…Such a belief may have played a role in Experiments 1 and 2, because rated pairwise relatedness between triad words was higher for coherent than for incoherent triads (cf. Zander, Horr, Bolte, & Volz, 2015). In Experiment 3, we used coherent and incoherent triads that did not differ in pairwise relatedness.…”