Abstract
Risk and uncertainty are central concepts of decision neuroscience. However, a comprehensive review of the literature shows that most studies define risk and uncertainty in an unclear fashion or use both terms interchangeably, which hinders the integration of the existing findings. We suggest uncertainty as an umbrella term that comprises scenarios characterized by outcome variance where relevant information about the type and likelihood of outcomes may be somewhat unavailable (ambiguity) and scenarios where the likelihood of outcomes is known (risk).
These conceptual issues are problematic for studies on the temporal neurodynamics of decision-making under risk and ambiguity, because they lead to heterogeneity in task design and the interpretation of the results. To assess this problem, we conducted a state-of-the-art review of ERP studies on risk and ambiguity in decision-making. By employing the above definitions to 16 reviewed studies, our results suggest that: (a) research has focused more on risk than ambiguity processing; (b) studies assessing decision-making under risk often implemented descriptive-based paradigms, whereas studies assessing ambiguity processing equally implemented descriptive- and experience-based tasks; (c) descriptive-based studies link risk processing to increased frontal negativities (e.g., N2, N400) and both risk and ambiguity to reduced parietal positivities (e.g., P2, P3); (d) experience-based studies link risk to increased P3 amplitudes and ambiguity to increased frontal negativities and the LPC component; (e) both risk and ambiguity processing seem to be related with cognitive control, conflict monitoring, and increased cognitive demand; (f) further research and improved tasks are needed to dissociate risk and ambiguity processing.
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Notes
The authors understand risk as higher probabilities of loss, whereas conflict as scenarios where outcomes have similar probabilities of occurring. This latter is in line with the conceptualization of risk adopted in this manuscript, and, thus we decided to consider high-conflict trials as high-risk trials, whereas low-risk loss and high-risk loss as low-risk trials (since the outcome variability is not maximal – i.e., 50%).
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the BIAL Foundation (grant number 252/20) and Portugal’s Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT (Grant Number: EXPL/EGE-ECO/1265/2021) for their financial support.
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The project was funded by the BIAL Foundation (grant number 252/20) under the Funding for Scientific Research Program, and by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Grant Number: EXPL/EGE-ECO/1265/2021).
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The present state-of-the-art review highlights what has been accomplished so far in the neuroeconomics literature of decision-making under uncertainty. We start by acknowledging the conceptual unclarity regarding the definitions of uncertainty, risk, and ambiguity, the implications for their operationalization, and ultimately for the neuroscientific research field. Thereafter, we analyze which conceptualizations best suit the neuroeconomic study of decision-making under uncertainty in an effort to guide future research on the matter. The second section focuses on the most frequently implemented paradigms, highlighting existing caveats that hinder the effective dissociation of risk and ambiguity processing. We briefly review neuroimaging literature on decision-making under uncertainty, explicitly focusing on the EEG/ERP literature. Here, it is noted that most research focuses on the feedback stages of the decision-making process, neglecting the choice evaluation stage. This has implications for understanding how the brain processes risk and ambiguity cues, as one cannot dissociate the effects of outcome processing from the former. Thus, we conducted a systematic review of the neural correlates of risk and ambiguity processing in the choice evaluation stage (with a focus on event-related potentials [ERPs]) to understand which processes are linked to each (or both) construct. In the final section, we emphasize what remains to be done in this field to better understand the decision-making process under uncertainty.
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Botelho, C., Fernandes, C., Campos, C. et al. Uncertainty deconstructed: conceptual analysis and state-of-the-art review of the ERP correlates of risk and ambiguity in decision-making. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 23, 522–542 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01101-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01101-8