Harink, Liset (2024) Choice Switching Behaviour in Relation to the LPC in Probabilistic Reward Learning. Master thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
People base their decisions in life on not always reliable feedback they receive about past behaviour. Through experience, people learn that some outcomes are more probable to happen in response to their actions than others. To investigate the mechanisms behind this feedback processing and its subsequent behaviour, we measured participants’ electrical brain activity during a probabilistic reward learning task by means of EEG. Participants were asked to choose stimuli connected to a certain probability of a positive outcome within a gain condition and a loss condition. Over trials they learned which stimulus had the highest chance of receiving a positive outcome. Behavioural results of the study suggest that people tend to learn the probability with the highest reward probability and not learn the distinction between the two lower probabilities. The Late Positive Component (LPC), a positive waveform from 400 to 800 ms after feedback, is thought to reflect (a part of) the feedback mechanism related to behavioural adaptation. Results indicate that the LPC was higher right before trials where a switch was made compared to where the same stimulus was chosen. The effect of the gain and loss condition might be obscured due to overlap of the positive P3b preceding the LPC. For future research is suggested to learn the different effects of the P3b and the LPC on behavioural adaptation by isolating the two components.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Lorist, M.M. and Span, M.M. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | Other [Master Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Dec 2024 15:38 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Dec 2024 15:38 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4456 |
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