Conceptual representations in goal-directed decision making
Emerging evidence suggests that the long-established distinction between habit-based and goal-directed decision-making mechanisms can also be sustained in humans. Although the habit-based system has been extensively studied in humans, the goal-directed system is less well characterized. This review...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Springer
2008
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Emerging evidence suggests that the long-established distinction between habit-based and goal-directed decision-making mechanisms can also be sustained in humans. Although the habit-based system has been extensively studied in humans, the goal-directed system is less well characterized. This review brings to that task the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual representational mechanisms. Conceptual representations are structured out of semantic consituents (concepts) - the use of which requires an ability to perform some language-like syntactic processing. Decision making - as investigated by neuroscience and psychology - is normally studied in isolation from questions about concepts as studied in philosophy and cognitive psychology. We ask what role concepts play in the "goal-directed" decision-making systems. We argue that one fruitful way of studying this system in humans is to investigate the extent to which it deploys conceptual representations. |
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