怎样改变我们的想法？理论神经学家已经建立了一些似乎比较合理的模型，来解释大脑是怎样根据“吵杂的”、并且经常是含糊的信息来做出一个决定的，但这些模型都假设，一旦决定已经做出，它就是永久性的。
现在，研究人员进行了一系列实验，让实验对象根据一个吵杂的视觉刺激来将一个手柄向两个位置当中的其中之一移动。他们用这些实验建立了一个新模型，来解释在我们做出一个决定后我们怎样以及什么时候改变我们的想法。实验中存在一些少见的情形：实验对象在选择他们答案的过程中便改变了他们的想法。对这些情形所做分析表明，即便在做出一个决定之后，大脑也会继续处理它所获得的信息（即信息仍然在处理管道中），要么撤销其当初决定，要么确认其当初决定。该新理论将犹豫不决和自我纠正的动作引入了决策过程中。
心理学之家 推荐原文原始出处：
Nature 461, 263-266 (10 September 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08275
Changes of mind in decision-making
Arbora Resulaj1,2, Roozbeh Kiani3, Daniel M. Wolpert1 & Michael N. Shadlen3
1 Computational and Biological Learning Laboratory, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK
2 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia Farm Research Campus, 19700 Helix Drive, Ashburn, Virginia 20147, USA
3 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Primate Research Center and Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Correspondence to: Michael N. Shadlen3 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.N.S.
A decision is a commitment to a proposition or plan of action based on evidence and the expected costs and benefits associated with the outcome. Progress in a variety of fields has led to a quantitative understanding of the mechanisms that evaluate evidence and reach a decision1, 2, 3. Several formalisms propose that a representation of noisy evidence is evaluated against a criterion to produce a decision4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Without additional evidence, however, these formalisms fail to explain why a decision-maker would change their mind. Here we extend a model, developed to account for both the timing and the accuracy of the initial decision9, to explain subsequent changes of mind. Subjects made decisions about a noisy visual stimulus, which they indicated by moving a handle. Although they received no additional information after initiating their movement, their hand trajectories betrayed a change of mind in some trials. We propose that noisy evidence is accumulated over time until it reaches a criterion level, or bound, which determines the initial decision, and that the brain exploits information that is in the processing pipeline when the initial decision is made to subsequently either reverse or reaffirm the initial decision. The model explains both the frequency of changes of mind as well as their dependence on both task difficulty and whether the initial decision was accurate or erroneous. The theoretical and experimental findings advance the understanding of decision-making to the highly flexible and cognitive acts of vacillation and self-correction.
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