scholarly journals Contextual cueing facilitation arises early in the time course of visual search: An investigation with the `speed-accuracy tradeoff task

2020 ◽  
Vol 82 (6) ◽  
pp. 2851-2861 ◽  
Author(s):  
Honami Kobayashi ◽  
Hirokazu Ogawa
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Reppert ◽  
Mathieu Servant ◽  
Richard P. Heitz ◽  
Jeffrey D. Schall

AbstractBalancing the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) is necessary for successful behavior. Using a visual search task with interleaved cues emphasizing speed or accuracy, we recently reported diverse contributions of frontal eye field (FEF) neurons instantiating salience evidence and response preparation. Here we report replication of visual search SAT performance in two macaque monkeys, new information about variation of saccade dynamics with SAT, extension of the neurophysiological investigation to describe processes in the superior colliculus, and description of the origin of search errors in this task. Saccade vigor varied idiosyncratically across SAT conditions and monkeys, but tended to decrease with response time. As observed in the FEF, speed-accuracy tradeoff was accomplished through several distinct adjustments in the superior colliculus. Visually-responsive neurons modulated baseline firing rate and the time course of salience evidence. Unlike FEF, the magnitude of visual responses in SC did not vary across SAT conditions, but the time to locate the target was longer in Accurate as compared to Fast trials. Also unlike FEF, the activity of SC movement neurons when saccades were initiated was equivalent in Fast and Accurate trials. Search errors occurred when visual salience neurons in FEF and SC treated distractors as targets, even in the Accurate condition. Saccade-related neural activity in SC but less FEF varied with saccade peak velocity. These results extend our understanding of the cortical and subcortical contributions to SAT.Significance statementNeurophysiological mechanisms of speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) have only recently been investigated. This paper reports the first replication of SAT performance in nonhuman primates, the first report of variation of saccade dynamics with SAT, the first description of superior colliculus contributions to SAT, and the first description of the origin of errors during SAT. These results inform and constrain new models of distributed decision-making.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Joe ◽  
Casey R. Kovesdi ◽  
Andrea Mack ◽  
Tina Miyake

This study examined the relationship between how visual information is organized and people’s visual search performance. Specifically, we systematically varied how visual search information was organized (from well-organized to disorganized), and then asked participants to perform a visual search task involving finding and identifying a number of visual targets within the field of visual non-targets. We hypothesized that the visual search task would be easier when the information was well-organized versus when it was disorganized. We further speculated that visual search performance would be mediated by cognitive workload, and that the results could be generally described by the well-established speed-accuracy tradeoff phenomenon. This paper presents the details of the study we designed and our results.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephani Foraker ◽  
Ian Cunnings ◽  
Andrea E. Martin

In this chapter, we review key insights gained by using the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) technique to address psycholinguistic and linguistic issues. SAT evidence has been instrumental in integrating sophisticated memory models into psycholinguistic theory, and bears on several linguistic issues in experimental syntax. We explain how SAT can provide clear evidence about time course of processing that is unconfounded by accuracy or probability of interpretation over trials, and in so doing, can fruitfully inform debates about processing and representation.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Reppert ◽  
Richard P. Heitz ◽  
Jeffrey D. Schall

SUMMARYThe balance of speed with accuracy requires error detection and performance adaptation. To date, neural concomitants of these processes have been investigated only with noninvasive measures. To provide the first neurophysiological description, macaque monkeys performed visual search under cued speed accuracy tradeoff (SAT). Monkeys changed SAT emphasis immediately after a cued switch while neuron discharges were sampled in medial frontal cortex area supplementary eye field (SEF). A multiplicity of SEF neurons signaled production of choice errors and timing errors. Modulation of SEF activity after choice errors predicted production of un-rewarded corrective saccades. Modulation of activity after timing errors signaled reward prediction error. Adaptation of performance during SAT of visual search was accomplished through pronounced changes in neural state from before search array presentation until after reward delivery. These results contextualize previous findings using noninvasive measures, complement neurophysiological findings in visuomotor structures, endorse the role of medial frontal cortex as a critic relative to the actor instantiated in visuomotor structures, and extend our understanding of the distributed neural mechanisms of SAT.HIGHLIGHTSMedial frontal cortex enables post-error adjustment during SATChoice and timing errors were signaled by partially overlapping neural poolsMedial frontal cortex can proactively modulate visuomotor processesMedial frontal cortex is to visuomotor circuits as critic to actor


2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (4) ◽  
pp. 1300-1314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathieu Servant ◽  
Gabriel Tillman ◽  
Jeffrey D. Schall ◽  
Gordon D. Logan ◽  
Thomas J. Palmeri

Stochastic accumulator models account for response times and errors in perceptual decision making by assuming a noisy accumulation of perceptual evidence to a threshold. Previously, we explained saccade visual search decision making by macaque monkeys with a stochastic multiaccumulator model in which accumulation was driven by a gated feed-forward integration to threshold of spike trains from visually responsive neurons in frontal eye field that signal stimulus salience. This neurally constrained model quantitatively accounted for response times and errors in visual search for a target among varying numbers of distractors and replicated the dynamics of presaccadic movement neurons hypothesized to instantiate evidence accumulation. This modeling framework suggested strategic control over gate or over threshold as two potential mechanisms to accomplish speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT). Here, we show that our gated accumulator model framework can account for visual search performance under SAT instructions observed in a milestone neurophysiological study of frontal eye field. This framework captured key elements of saccade search performance, through observed modulations of neural input, as well as flexible combinations of gate and threshold parameters necessary to explain differences in SAT strategy across monkeys. However, the trajectories of the model accumulators deviated from the dynamics of most presaccadic movement neurons. These findings demonstrate that traditional theoretical accounts of SAT are incomplete descriptions of the underlying neural adjustments that accomplish SAT, offer a novel mechanistic account of decision-making mechanisms during speed-accuracy tradeoff, and highlight questions regarding the identity of model and neural accumulators. NEW & NOTEWORTHY A gated accumulator model is used to elucidate neurocomputational mechanisms of speed-accuracy tradeoff. Whereas canonical stochastic accumulators adjust strategy only through variation of an accumulation threshold, we demonstrate that strategic adjustments are accomplished by flexible combinations of both modulation of the evidence representation and adaptation of accumulator gate and threshold. The results indicate how model-based cognitive neuroscience can translate between abstract cognitive models of performance and neural mechanisms of speed-accuracy tradeoff.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 1338
Author(s):  
Jeffrey D. Schall ◽  
Thomas R. Reppert

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 372-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Reppert ◽  
Mathieu Servant ◽  
Richard P. Heitz ◽  
Jeffrey D. Schall

Balancing the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) is necessary for successful behavior. Using a visual search task with interleaved cues emphasizing speed or accuracy, we recently reported diverse contributions of frontal eye field (FEF) neurons instantiating salience evidence and response preparation. Here, we report replication of visual search SAT performance in two macaque monkeys, new information about variation of saccade dynamics with SAT, extension of the neurophysiological investigation to describe processes in the superior colliculus (SC), and a description of the origin of search errors in this task. Saccade vigor varied idiosyncratically across SAT conditions and monkeys but tended to decrease with response time. As observed in the FEF, speed-accuracy tradeoff was accomplished through several distinct adjustments in the superior colliculus. In “Accurate” relative to “Fast” trials, visually responsive neurons in SC as in FEF had lower baseline firing rates and later target selection. The magnitude of these adjustments in SC was indistinguishable from that in FEF. Search errors occurred when visual salience neurons in the FEF and the SC treated distractors as targets, even in the Accurate condition. Unlike FEF, the magnitude of visual responses in the SC did not vary across SAT conditions. Also unlike FEF, the activity of SC movement neurons when saccades were initiated was equivalent in Fast and Accurate trials. Saccade-related neural activity in SC, but not FEF, varied with saccade peak velocity. These results extend our understanding of the cortical and subcortical contributions to SAT. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Neurophysiological mechanisms of speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) have only recently been investigated. This article reports the first replication of SAT performance in nonhuman primates, the first report of variation of saccade dynamics with SAT, the first description of superior colliculus contributions to SAT, and the first description of the origin of errors during SAT. These results inform and constrain new models of distributed decision making.


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