Developmental frontal brain activation differences in overcoming heuristic bias

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.03.004
• Publication Date: 2019-03-21T05:29:20Z
• Authors: Katell Mevel; Grégoire Borst; Nicolas Poirel; Grégory Simon; François Orliac; Olivier Etard; Olivier Houdé; Wim De Neys
• Keywords: Adult; Male; Aging; Adolescent; 150; Prefrontal Cortex; Neuropsychological Tests; Gyrus Cinguli; Conflict, Psychological; [SCCO]Cognitive science; Young Adult; 03 medical and health sciences; Cognition; 0302 clinical medicine; Reaction Time; Heuristics; Humans; Problem Solving; [SCCO.NEUR]Cognitive science/Neuroscience; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; 3. Good health; Inhibition, Psychological; [SCCO.PSYC]Cognitive science/Psychology; Female

Since reasoning is often biased by intuitive heuristics, the development of sound reasoning has long been postulated to depend on successful bias monitoring and inhibition. The present fMRI study aimed to identify neural correlates of developmental changes in these processes. A group of adults and young adolescents were presented with ratio-bias problems in which an intuitively cued heuristic response could be incongruent (conflict item) or congruent (no-conflict item) with the correct response. Results showed that successfully avoiding biased responding on conflict items across both age groups was associated with increased activation in Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) and the right Lateral Prefrontal Cortex (LPFC) regions of interest. Critically, the right LPFC activation decreased with age. Biased responding did not result in right LPFC or ACC modulation and failed to show any developmental activation changes. We discuss implications for ongoing debates on the nature of heuristic bias and its development.