Beyond introspective illusion: A Brain computer Interface approach to decision awareness

Abstract: When we make a free choice, we feel conscious and in control of our decision processes. However, over the past decades, studies on introspection demonstrated that our self-knowledge faculties are crippled by illusory content. In Part i, we suggest that introspection can be framed as a hierarchically organized inference process and we proposed an innovative methodological approach to challenge this hypothesis. We used a free decision paradigm in which no high order nor low motor level processing were solicited. Further, we track in real time internal decision variables through a Brain Computer Interface (BCI), and probe both implicitly and explicitly participants’ decision awareness. The present thesis investigates two main questions.
First, what are the conditions for people to be aware of their impending decisions? Second, does people’s introspections access genuine mental activity or are they pure retrospective illusions? Overall, the present thesis provides new insights and methodological tools for the study of decision awareness emergence. Our results converge toward the idea that self-knowledge of decision is a hierarchically organized Bayesian inference process involving multiple cues.

Jury:
Claire Sergent (Université Paris Descartes)
Elisa Flevich
Lucie Charles (UCL)
Valerian Chambon (IJN/ENS)
Sid Kouider (LSCP/ENS - PhD supervisor)

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