Extended Data Fig. 1: Task Design.
From: Goal commitment is supported by vmPFC through selective attention
(a) Illustration of task as presented to participants using the framing story of an ‘underwater’ fishing game. In addition to the features described in Fig. 1a, the number of nets completed (that is points) was shown in the top right corner next to the money bag icon. Total nets were directly translated to the participant’s bonus payment at the end of the study. The number of trials remaining in the session was shown directly underneath, as a proportion of the total trials in the session. This was to incentivise participants to make as strategic choices as possible to maximise the number of nets they could fill within the remaining trials. (b) At the start of each new block, participants were presented with the size of the net they needed to fill. (c) A block ended when the participant had filled the net, and a point was won. (d) Task sequence inside the scanner. To keep the task visually consistent with the spatial session outside the scanner, participants passively viewed the three sea creatures flash on screen during the inter-trial interval, but were not required to report the location of the creatures. To dissociate activity related to the decision from activity related to response indication, we included a two second buffer zone once the offers were presented, before participants could make their response. In the main fMRI analyses, activity was time-locked to the onset of the decision period, shown here as ‘view offers’. In the additional ITI analysis, activity was time-locked to ‘ITI 1’. (e) Task sequence in the spatial session (outside the scanner). Participants initiated the presentation of the creatures. After viewing the presentation of the creatures for 500 ms, they were then probed on the location of the three creatures in a randomised order before being presented with the main decision task.
