Valence and magnitude ambiguity in feedback processing

Abstract

BackgroundOutcome feedback which indicates behavioral consequences are crucial for reinforcement learning and environmental adaptation. Nevertheless, outcome information in daily life is often totally or partially ambiguous. Studying how people interpret this kind of information would provide important knowledge about the human evaluative system.MethodsThis study concentrates on the neural processing of partially ambiguous feedback, that is, either its valence or magnitude is unknown to participants. To address this topic, we sequentially presented valence and magnitude information; electroencephalography (EEG) response to each kind of presentation was recorded and analyzed. The event‐related potential components feedback‐related negativity (FRN) and P3 were used as indices of neural activity.ResultsConsistent with previous literature, the FRN elicited by ambiguous valence was not significantly different from that elicited by negative valence. On the other hand, the FRN elicited by ambiguous magnitude was larger than both the large and small magnitude, indicating the motivation to seek unambiguous magnitude information. The P3 elicited by ambiguous valence and ambiguous magnitude was not significantly different from that elicited by negative valence and small magnitude, respectively, indicating the emotional significance of feedback ambiguity. Finally, the aforementioned effects also manifested in the stage of information integration.ConclusionThese findings indicate both similarities and discrepancies between the processing of valence ambiguity and that of magnitude ambiguity, which may help understand the mechanisms of ambiguous information processing.

Goals matter: Amplification of the motivational significance of the feedback when goal impact is increased

“…This suggests that when feedback did not carry any valuable information regarding action value, it took longer to update this event than when a clear value could readily be extracted based on it. Interestingly, in both groups, this uninformative feedback also elicited an FRN component prior to the delayed P3, resembling that elicited for the negative feedback, similar to what Gu et al (2017) previously reported.…”

Self-affirmation enhances the processing of uncertainty: An event-related potential study

“…The electrodes used in data analysis on the P3 were Cz, CPz, and Pz influence of self-affirmation on behavioral response, which is not rare when the feedback probability was controlled (Gu, Ge, et al, 2010;Gu, Huang, et al, 2010). However, we replicated the main findings of past ERP studies on decisionmaking: first, the FRN showed similar amplitude in response to ambiguous and negative feedback in the control group (Becker, Nitsch, Miltner, & Straube, 2014;Gu et al, 2017;Holroyd, Hajcak, & Larsen, 2006); second, the P3 is larger in response to large magnitude feedback over small and to positive feedback compared to negative and ambiguous feedback (Gu, Ge, et al, 2010;Gu, Lei, et al, 2011). These findings suggest that using the gambling task with EEG recording was successful.…”

Failure generates impulsivity only when outcomes cannot be controlled.

“…However, losses need not necessarily represent expectancy violation, such as cases where the player does not yet have a reliable understanding of their opponent's dominant strategy. The current data would also seem to suggest that it is only unambiguously negative outcomes (losses) rather than ambiguously negative outcomes (draws) that puncture the failure-faster link (see Gu, Feng, Broster, Yuan, Xu & Luo, 2017, for further discussion). Future research incorporating individual differences in empathy, locus of control, personal understanding of luckskill balance, accuracy of meta-cognition regarding one's own performance, and the use of early neural responses to predict eventual behavioural outcomes will serve to further identify the conditions under which one becomes more or less impulsive as a function of outcome.…”