Change of intention in “picking” situations

Cases in which an agent has to select between alternatives that make no difference to him/her are termed picking type selections. This chapter analyzes the mechanism that makes a picking selection possible at all. The basic approach is that although on a cognitive level there is symmetry between the alternatives, on a lower causal level the symmetry does not maintain. To understand the nature of neuronal asymmetry in picking cases a masked priming paradigm was employed while recording EEG. This revealed a complex and dynamical “change of intention” phenomenon as part of the picking selection process. This chapter proposes a dynamical large-scale neural-network model for such picking scenarios. The mechanism suggested by the model captures each decision process, whether or not the agent is indifferent to the alternatives, as interplay between biases and a continuous random inner state noise.