Broad Audience Title

Information processing and decision making strategies

Scientific Title

Hemispheric contributions to decision strategy: effect of handedness and interhemispheric communication

By Kayla Onafaro
Biomedicine/Biosystems
iCons Year 4
2016
Executive Summary 

Our research focuses on how the two hemispheres of the brain differentially contribute to information processing and strategic decision-making. We will also determine how the cross-talk between the two hemispheres influence decision-making behavior through four different experimental designs. The first, is a multi-outcome mixed gamble task to examine whether the subject's decision making strategy is biased towards gain maximizing or loss minimizing. The second experiment is a framing task in which the participant will be faced with the task of choosing between two gamble options. The options will be presented in a gain frame or a loss frame, and the effect will be examined through the different choices. The third task is a Poffenberger paradigm design. Participants' head positions will be fixed by a chin rest and they will respond to a red dot appearing in their left or right visual field by raising their hand. Interhemispheric transmission involving the corpus callosum will be measured by the difference in mean reaction times between crossed (e.g. left visual field stimulus with left hand response) and uncrossed (e.g. left visual field stimulus with right hand response) conditions. The fourth technique will be the use of paper and pencil scales to measure everyday decision making strategy use and the participant's handedness.

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