Damasio Revisited

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Damasio Revisited

• 4 factors in intuitive decision making

d.j.bierman_at_uva.nl
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Outline

• Damasios gambling experiment results
• Movie introducing new approach
• New task artificial grammar
• New Dep. Var Pupil dilation
• Results and 3 factor model
• Movie introducing 4th (controversial) factor
• Results
• Conclusions

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Damasios Question Why do Patients with
prefrontal damage make stupid decisions?
According to the Editor of Science this was the
first sensible experiment on Intuition.
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Damasio gambling procedure

• Participant gets initially 2000
• Draws cards from one of 4 different decks
• 2 of 4 decks are advantageous (good decks)

Preparation
Skin Conductance
time
Dep.var SM
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Results Gambling Experiments

• BEFORE BEING ABLE TO TELL HOW THEY COME TO
  DECISION
• Normals have a large SM before Incorrect Decision
  (bad decks) as if their body warns them (gut
  feeling?)
• BUT dutch students dont!

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Pupil Dilation as Somatic marker
New Task Is this a word from Mars
New Dependent Variable Pupil Dilation
Show movie
Test sound
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(No Transcript)
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Results Performance
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Results Somatic Marker

• Pupil Dilation when contemplating incorrect
  alternative is larger
• Pupil Dilation preceding decision is a predictor
  of future choice (suggestive)

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Model intuitive decisions
Previous problem
Current similar problem
Previous decision (selection of alternative)
NC Reduction of Alternatives
Good or Bad outcome
Somatic Marking Of Decision
Current decision
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Three factors

• Implicit learning
• Somatic Marking
• Listening to Somatic Marker

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Presentiment as 4th Factor
Show movie (dutch)
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Results of presentiment experiments

• Larger skin conductance preceding randomized
  emotional events
• Also in Damasios own data (card level analysis)!
  
• And in Hamms data

erotic
neutral
And what do the brains do?
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(No Transcript)
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Unified Intuition 4 factor paradigm

• Manipulate the future randomly
• Is possible by having two reinforcements eg -10
  euro and -100 euro randomly selected.
• Not as strong as neutral-emotional pictures

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Comparing -10 -100
feedback
Decision made
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Conclusions

• Intuitive decisions research is a fruitful area
  for the study of non conscious processes
• One aspect of Intuition might be trainable
• Biofeedback of somatic marker
• Creativity and Instinct can be fit in model
• Retrocausality might be possible

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