Abstract: Decision-making as an advanced cognitive activity exists in human daily life. In the past few decades, the rationality of the decision-making process has sparked enormous interest within the fields of psychology and also economy. In the contrast to the axiom of description of invariance, vast numbers of reports in the literature and results from researches have indicated that people often deviate from responses considered as being normative in many judgement and decision-making tasks, which is also known as framing effect in decision-making that different representations of the same problem do not yield the same preference or choice. Traditional research in framing effects has commonly and mainly been focused on risky choice framing effect, whereas the research on other types of framing effect and the influential factors seems to be lacking. It can be seen from previous studies that subject’s characteristics especially cognitive style plays an important role in decision-making process. In order to examine the influences of cognitive styles on decision-making of different types of framing effect, the current study used ERP technology to investigate the differences of cognitive activities and neural mechanisms between individuals with field-dependent cognitive style and field-independent cognitively respectively. The types of choice framing effect in the present study included risky framing effect, attribute framing effect, and goal framing effect. Subjects were selected based on previous questionnaire asked to make a choice by pressing the corresponding response key. Results from the analysis of the reaction time and the average amplitude of N200 and P300 in the present study showed that the average amplitudes of N200 and P300 elicited by the participants with field-dependent cognitive style are remarkably lower than the field-independent individuals, whereas the reaction time of the participants with field-dependent cognitive style are remarkably higher than the field-independent subjects. Furthermore, the average amplitudes of N200 and P300 in the left hemisphere are significantly lower than the right hemisphere, regardless of the cognitive styles. Consistent with previous studies, the present study demonstrated significant differences of decision-making between individuals with the two cognitive styles, known as field-dependent and field-independent. The differences existed not only in reaction time but also in brain activities revealed by N200 and P300. The result that higher mean amplitude of N200 and P300 elicited by the subjects with field-independent cognitive style than that of the field-dependent subjects suggest more attention resources and further cognitive processing were assigned to the information of the decision questions in individuals with field-independent cognitive style. Furthermore, the right hemisphere has been proved to play a vital role in the cognitive processing of decision-making, and the right-hemisphere dominance in early evaluation process and later-on cognitive assessment has been found in subjects with both field-dependent cognitive style and field-independent cognitive style. By integrating the research results of the present study with previous researches, two main conclusions can be drawn: First, comparing with individuals with field-dependent cognitive style, individuals with field-independent cognitive style put extra cognitive processing into the initial assessment and feedback process afterwards; Second, the right hemisphere plays a vital role in the cognitive processing of decision-making in subjects with both field-dependent cognitive style and field-independent cognitive style.

Key words: decision-making, field-dependent subjects, field-independent subjects, framing effects, N200, P300, ERP

摘要： 采用ERP方法，考察了不同认知风格被试在决策过程中的框架效应。分析的脑电成分为N200和P300成分。结果发现：场依存者的反应时显著高于场独立者；场依存者诱发的N200和P300平均波幅均显著低于场独立者；大脑右半球的N200和P300平均波幅均显著高于左半球。这些结果表明，场独立者在决策过程中更具有理性，基本不受决策问题表述方式的影响，且该决策过程主要发生在大脑的右半球。

关键词: 决策, 场独立者, 场依存者, 框架效应, N200, P300, ERP