Towards a cognitive robotics methodology for reward-based decision-making: dynamical systems modelling of the Iowa Gambling Task

Abstract

The somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) posits that the role of emotions and mental states in decision-making manifests through bodily responses to stimuli of import to the organism's welfare. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), proposed by Bechara and Damasio in the mid-1990s, has provided the major source of empirical validation to the role of somatic markers in the service of flexible and cost-effective decision-making in humans. In recent years the IGT has been the subject of much criticism concerning: (1) whether measures of somatic markers reveal that they are important for decision-making as opposed to behaviour preparation;(2) the underlying neural substrate posited as critical to decision-making of the type relevant to the task; and (3) aspects of the methodological approach used, particularly on the canonical version of the task. In this paper, a cognitive robotics methodology is proposed to explore a dynamical systems approach as it applies to the neural computation of reward-based learning and issues concerning embodiment. This approach is particularly relevant in light of a strongly emerging alternative hypothesis to the SMH, the reversal learning hypothesis, which links, behaviourally and neurocomputationally, a number of more or less complex reward-based decision-making tasks, including the 'A-not-B' task -already subject to dynamical systems investigations with a focus on neural activation dynamics. It is also suggested that the cognitive robotics methodology may be used to extend systematically the IGT benchmark to more naturalised, but nevertheless controlled, settings that might better explore the extent to which the SMH, and somatic states per se, impact on complex decision-making.

The Feeling of Action Tendencies: On the Emotional Regulation of Goal-Directed Behavior

“…Thelen et al, 2001 ). However, it has also been posited to be of relevance to modeling emotional phenomena in the context of Bechara et al’s ( 1994 ) Iowa gambling task (Lowe and Ziemke, 2010 ; Lowe et al, 2010b ). The DFT approach has spawned a perspective on representations in the brain that map cognitive phenomena to continuous dimensions.…”

“…Abbrev: VmPFC (ventral-medial prefrontal cortex), Amyg (amygdala), SMC (somatosensory cortices). Adapted from Lowe and Ziemke ( 2010 ).…”