Prevalence of a Late Readiness Potential During a Deliberate Decision-Making Task

Abstract

This study investigated the hypothesis that neural markers associated with arbitrary decision-making are present in higher order, deliberate decisions. Furthermore, the study aimed to investigate the effect of higher order decision content on neurophysiological markers such as the late readiness potential and the P300 potential. An experiment was designed to measure, evaluate, and compare these electroencephalographic potentials under both arbitrary and deliberate choice conditions. Participants were presented with legal cases and had to convict and acquit criminal offenders. Distinct readiness potentials and P300 potentials were observed for both arbitrary and deliberate decisions across all participants. These findings support the hypothesis that the readiness potential and the P300 potential are present in the neurophysiological data for higher order deliberate decisions. The study also showed initial findings of how the readiness potential may inherently relate to decision content. Increased readiness potential amplitudes were observed for participants with previous exposure to violent crime when they had to acquit or convict criminals accused of violent crimes.

Libet’s legacy: A primer to the neuroscience of volition

“…19 This is important because such choices arguably constitute most of the real-life decisions that are carried out on a daily basis (Mudrik et al, 2020). However, others did find RPs accompanying deliberate decisions (Blignaut & van den Heever, 2022;Parés-Pujolràs et al, 2021;. One explanation for this discrepancy-other than a simple failure to replicate-might be that the decisions in those studies were less consequential than those of Maoz et al (2019).…”

“…The participants knew that their choices may determine which organization would in reality receive this considerable donation. Similarly, Blignaut & van den Heever (2022) presented descriptions of two crimes to participants who were then asked to choose who to convict and who to acquit. Using such methods, the simple act of pressing one of two buttons is more likely to become personally meaningful for the participant, and should therefore, be accompanied by appropriate forethought typical for many real-life decisions.…”