ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R
主办:中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理科学进展 ›› 2022, Vol. 30 ›› Issue (6): 1377-1392.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2022.01377

• 研究方法 • 上一篇    下一篇

风险决策研究中的仿真气球冒险任务

邓尧1,2,3, 王梦梦1,2,3, 饶恒毅1,2,3()   

  1. 1上海外国语大学国际工商管理学院
    2上海外国语大学脑与认知科学应用重点实验室, 上海 201620
    3上海外国语大学磁共振成像研究中心, 上海 201620
  • 收稿日期:2021-06-02 出版日期:2022-06-15 发布日期:2022-04-26
  • 通讯作者: 饶恒毅 E-mail:hengyi@gmail.com
  • 基金资助:
    *国家自然科学基金重点项目(71942003);上海外国语大学校级重大项目(2021114002);上海外国语大学校级重大项目(2021114003)

Risk-taking research based on the Balloon Analog Risk Task

DENG Yao1,2,3, WANG Mengmeng1,2,3, RAO Hengyi1,2,3()   

  1. 1School of Business and Management, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai 201620, China
    2Key Laboratory of Applied Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai 201620, China
    3Center for Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research & Key Laboratory of Applied Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai 201620, China
  • Received:2021-06-02 Online:2022-06-15 Published:2022-04-26
  • Contact: RAO Hengyi E-mail:hengyi@gmail.com

摘要:

仿真气球冒险任务(The Balloon Analog Risk Task, BART)能在实验室环境下模拟真实世界的风险情境, 具有高生态性, 稳定性和可靠性等优点, 已经成为风险决策研究中最常用的实验范式之一。近年来, 研究者发展了多种BART变体范式, 对发展、健康以及精神病理等多领域的风险决策行为及其神经基础开展了广泛探索。BART任务中的风险决策加工与腹侧纹状体、前扣带皮层、脑岛、中脑及背外侧前额叶等脑区的激活相关。未来研究需要进一步完善BART任务在风险决策认知神经领域的信效度并扩展BART的应用情境。

关键词: 仿真气球冒险任务(BART), 风险决策, 认知神经机制

Abstract:

In daily life and work, people inevitably need to make choices and decisions under risky situations. The existence of risks may bring some negative consequences to the decision-makers or maybe the beginning of new opportunities. Therefore, how people make effective decisions in different risky situations and the cognitive neural mechanism behind it has been a research hotspot in many disciplines. For many years, a variety of measurements have been used to explore an individual’s risk-taking behaviors. Many studies leverage self-reported instruments to investigate risk (e.g., Sensation-Seeking Scale, Barratt Impulsiveness Scale), while others measure risk-taking using some paradigms. The Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) is extensively accepted and applied by many researchers due to its well simulation of real-life risk-taking situations in a laboratory environment. The current study synthesizes the BART’s reliability and validity compared to other paradigms and further probes the advantages of using the BART as the measuring instrument of risk-taking behaviors. Moreover, the present study also discusses the evolution of the paradigm and summarizes the research progress of BART based on the existing behavioral and neural studies. Finally, some deficiencies of BART and the prospects for its development are put forward in conclusion.
Compared with other risk-taking paradigms, the BART has been proved to be of high ecology, stability, and reliability under different risk circumstances. It has become one of the most widely used paradigms for risky decision-making research. It also has unique advantages in the prediction of some risks, such as smoking, drinking and substance use. As the pioneering behavioral paradigm that was exploited to measure adolescent risk-taking behaviors, the BART contributes a lot to exploring youths' addiction and substance use. Recently, researchers have developed a series of variants of the BART paradigm to adapt to the needs of different research situations. Many studies have leveraged the BART to extensively explore neural correlates of risk-taking behaviors in developmental, healthy, pathological, and addiction research. Overall, BART can not only meet the needs of behavioral measurement in different risk scenarios; but also be well combined with a series of neural measurement techniques. Neuroimaging studies have confirmed that risk-taking in the BART is associated with activations in multiple brain regions, including the ventral striatum, anterior cingulate cortex, insula, midbrain, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest that the risk-taking behaviors measured by the BART involve rewards, emotions, learning, and evaluation. BART is also regarded as a classical paradigm for sequential risk decision-making. Similar findings are mentioned in the computational modeling of the BART data in sequential risk-taking consequences, emphasizing the critical role of learning and evaluation processes in the task.
Although the BART has been widely used in risk-taking research, future studies are still needed to further improve the reliability and stability of the BART for cognitive neuroscience research and expand its application scope. Currently, the BART research at the neural level still lacks large sample data, which may lead to incorrect research results like underestimating the possibility of an individual’s risk-taking in real life. It is necessary to further expand the sample size, build a database based on the BART behavior and neuroimaging experiments, and share data and research results in different fields and levels to enhance our understanding of risky decision-making.

Key words: The Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART), risk decision-making, cognitive neural mechanism

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