Collaborative Research: The Measurement and Neural Foundations of Stragegic IQ

研究人员将结合经济学、决策科学和认知神经科学的方法。其目标是开发一个系统来衡量不同的人在战略社会情景中的推理能力，并探索大脑的特定部分如何参与战略决策。研究人员计划开发一种衡量标准，以总结特定个人在实验室环境中执行一系列战略任务的情况。他们将管理这些任务--例如，测试“战略智商”--给不同群体中具有不同特征的个体。有三个群体是由我们可能认为特别擅长战略思维的人组成的：数学天赋的本科生，接受过战略思维正式分析(博弈论)培训的学生，以及经验丰富的企业经理。第五组是患有特殊大脑损伤的个人，这些损伤对认知有特定的和有充分证据的影响。来自所有组的数据将被结合起来，以测试由两名PI开发的关于人们如何学习战略性思维的新理论。另一项研究将只涉及第五组成员。这些人还将在接受fMRI脑成像扫描的同时完成战略任务。其目的是将这些参与者玩得不好的“游戏”证据与来自大脑图像的证据联系起来，将特定类型的错误与特定的大脑回路联系起来。

The investigators will combine approaches from economics, decision science, and cognitive neuroscience. The goal is to develop a system to measure how well different people reason in strategic social situations, and to explore how specific parts of the brain may be involved in strategic decision making.The investigators plan to develop a measure to summarize how specific individuals perform in a set of strategic tasks conducted in a laboratory environment. They will administer these tasks -- eg, test "strategic IQ" --to individuals in separate groups with distinct characteristics. Three groups are made up of people who we might expect to be especially good at strategic thinking: mathematically gifted undergraduate students, students trained in the formal analysis of strategic thinking (game theory), and experienced business managers. The fifth group are individuals with specialized brain lesions that have specific and well-documented effects on cognition.Data from all groups will be combined to test a new theory developed by two of the PIs about how people learn to think strategically. An additional study will involve only members of the fifth group. These individuals will also complete strategic tasks while undergoing fMRI brain imaging scans. The goal is to link evidence about the "games" that these participants play poorly with evidence from brain images, to link specific kinds of errors to specific brain circuits.