scholarly journals The time-course of distractor-based activation modulates effects of speed-accuracy tradeoffs in conflict tasks

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Mittelstädt ◽  
Jeff Miller ◽  
Hartmut Leuthold ◽  
Ian Grant Mackenzie ◽  
Rolf Ulrich
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Conflicting Information ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Time Courses ◽  
Decision Boundaries ◽  
Speed Accuracy

AbstractThe cognitive processes underlying the ability of human performers to trade speed for accuracy is often conceptualized within evidence accumulation models, but it is not yet clear whether and how these models can account for decision-making in the presence of various sources of conflicting information. In the present study, we provide evidence that speed-accuracy tradeoffs (SATs) can have opposing effects on performance across two different conflict tasks. Specifically, in a single preregistered experiment, the mean reaction time (RT) congruency effect in the Simon task increased, whereas the mean RT congruency effect in the Eriksen task decreased, when the focus was put on response speed versus accuracy. Critically, distributional RT analyses revealed distinct delta plot patterns across tasks, thus indicating that the unfolding of distractor-based response activation in time is sufficient to explain the opposing pattern of congruency effects. In addition, a recent evidence accumulation model with the notion of time-varying conflicting information was successfully fitted to the experimental data. These fits revealed task-specific time-courses of distractor-based activation and suggested that time pressure substantially decreases decision boundaries in addition to reducing the duration of non-decision processes and the rate of evidence accumulation. Overall, the present results suggest that time pressure can have multiple effects in decision-making under conflict, but that strategic adjustments of decision boundaries in conjunction with different time-courses of distractor-based activation can produce counteracting effects on task performance with different types of distracting sources of information.

scholarly journals An evidence accumulation model of perceptual discrimination with naturalistic stimuli

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hector Palada ◽  
Rachel A Searston ◽  
Annabel Persson ◽  
Timothy Ballard ◽  
Matthew B Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Dynamic Decision Making ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Natural Stimuli ◽  
Perceptual Judgments ◽  
Linear Ballistic Accumulator ◽  
Decision Making Model ◽  
Speed Accuracy

Evidence accumulation models have been used to describe the cognitive processes underlying performance in tasks involving two-choice decisions about unidimensional stimuli, such as motion or orientation. Given the multidimensionality of natural stimuli, however, we might expect qualitatively different patterns of evidence accumulation in more applied perceptual tasks. One domain that relies heavily on human decisions about complex natural stimuli is fingerprint discrimination. We know little about the ability of evidence accumulation models to account for the dynamic decision process of a fingerprint examiner resolving if two different prints belong to the same finger or not. Here, we apply a dynamic decision-making model — the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA) — to fingerprint discrimination decisions in order to gain insight into the cognitive processes underlying these complex perceptual judgments. Across three experiments, we show that the LBA provides an accurate description of the fingerprint discrimination decision process with manipulations in visual noise, speed-accuracy emphasis, and training. Our results demonstrate that the LBA is a promising model for furthering our understanding of applied decision-making with naturally varying visual stimuli.

scholarly journals Adaptive integration of habits into depth-limited planning defines a habitual-goal–directed spectrum

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (45) ◽  
pp. 12868-12873 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehdi Keramati ◽  
Peter Smittenaar ◽  
Raymond J. Dolan ◽  
Peter Dayan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Mental Simulation ◽  
Adaptive Integration ◽  
Accurate Evaluation ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Speed Accuracy ◽  
Accuracy Tradeoff

Behavioral and neural evidence reveal a prospective goal-directed decision process that relies on mental simulation of the environment, and a retrospective habitual process that caches returns previously garnered from available choices. Artificial systems combine the two by simulating the environment up to some depth and then exploiting habitual values as proxies for consequences that may arise in the further future. Using a three-step task, we provide evidence that human subjects use such a normative plan-until-habit strategy, implying a spectrum of approaches that interpolates between habitual and goal-directed responding. We found that increasing time pressure led to shallower goal-directed planning, suggesting that a speed-accuracy tradeoff controls the depth of planning with deeper search leading to more accurate evaluation, at the cost of slower decision-making. We conclude that subjects integrate habit-based cached values directly into goal-directed evaluations in a normative manner.

Searching for Cues: An Analysis on Factors Effecting the Decision Making Process of Regional Airline Pilots

2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 578-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yee-Len Khoo ◽  
Kathleen Mosier
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Weak Link ◽  
Loose Coupling ◽  
Aviation Accidents ◽  
Airline Pilots ◽  
Conflicting Information ◽  
Accident Causation

Research on aviation accidents and incidents has indicated humans are potentially the “weak link” in the chain of accident causation. The problem faced by researchers here is there is often no clear standard of determining what decision is “correct” or “incorrect“. In addition, the loose coupling of an event outcome and the decision process makes it hard researchers to use accident reports as a reliable indicator of the quality of the decision. The goal of this research is to explore cognitive processes of pilots when dealing with the types of decisions required under time pressure and with conflicting information and how pilots use information as they are performing diagnostic and decision-making tasks in the automated cockpit. Differences were found between pilots with more experience in automated aircrafts however predicted automation bias effects were non-apparent.

scholarly journals Tracking dynamic adjustments to decision making and performance monitoring processes in conflict tasks

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Feuerriegel ◽  
Matthew Jiwa ◽  
William F Turner ◽  
Milan Andrejević ◽  
Robert Hester ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Error Detection ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Conflict Monitoring ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Time Courses ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Conflicting Stimulus

AbstractHow we exert control over our decision making has been investigated using conflict tasks, which involve stimuli containing elements that are either congruent or incongruent. In these tasks, participants adapt their decision making strategies following exposure to incongruent stimuli. According to conflict monitoring accounts, conflicting stimulus features are detected in medial frontal cortex, and the extent of experienced conflict scales with response time (RT) and frontal theta-band activity in the electroencephalogram (EEG). However, the consequent adjustments to decision processes following response conflict are not well-specified. To characterise these adjustments and their neural implementation we recorded EEG during a Flanker task. We traced the time-courses of performance monitoring processes (frontal theta) and multiple processes related to perceptual decision making. In each trial participants judged which of two overlaid gratings forming a plaid stimulus (termed the S1 target) was of higher contrast. The stimulus was divided into two sections, which each contained higher contrast gratings in either congruent or incongruent directions. Shortly after responding to the S1 target, an additional S2 target was presented, which was always congruent. Our EEG results suggest enhanced sensory evidence representations in visual cortex and reduced evidence accumulation rates for S2 targets following incongruent S1 stimuli. Frontal theta amplitudes positively correlated with RT following S1 targets (in line with conflict monitoring accounts). Following S2 targets there was no such correlation, and theta amplitude profiles instead resembled decision evidence accumulation trajectories. Based on these differing amplitude profiles across S1 and S2 we formulated a novel theory of frontal theta and performance monitoring, which accounts for differing theta amplitude profiles previously observed across tasks that do and do not involve conflict. We propose that frontal theta does not actually index conflict detection but instead reflects a more general performance monitoring process related to decision confidence and rapid error detection.

scholarly journals Dynamic influences on static measures of metacognition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kobe Desender ◽  
Luc Vermeylen ◽  
Tom Verguts
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Independent Dataset ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Domain Generality ◽  
Sources Of Variation ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Speed Accuracy ◽  
Speed And Accuracy ◽  
Accuracy Tradeoff

AbstractHumans differ in their capability to judge the accuracy of their own choices via confidence judgments. Signal detection theory has been used to quantify the extent to which confidence tracks accuracy via M-ratio, often referred to as metacognitive efficiency. This measure, however, is static in that it does not consider the dynamics of decision making. This could be problematic because humans may shift their level of response caution to alter the tradeoff between speed and accuracy. Such shifts could induce unaccounted-for sources of variation in the assessment of metacognition. Instead, evidence accumulation frameworks consider decision making, including the computation of confidence, as a dynamic process unfolding over time. We draw on evidence accumulation frameworks to examine the influence of response caution on metacognition. Simulation results demonstrate that response caution has an influence on M-ratio. We then tested and confirmed that this was also the case in human participants who were explicitly instructed to either focus on speed or accuracy. We next demonstrated that this association between M-ratio and response caution was also present in an experiment without any reference towards speed. The latter finding was replicated in an independent dataset. In contrast, when data were analyzed with a novel dynamic measure of metacognition, which we refer to as v-ratio, in all of the three studies there was no effect of speed-accuracy tradeoff. These findings have important implications for research on metacognition, such as the question about domain-generality, individual differences in metacognition and its neural correlates.

scholarly journals Tuning the speed-accuracy trade-off to maximize reward rate in multisensory decision-making

eLife ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Drugowitsch ◽  
Gregory C DeAngelis ◽  
Dora E Angelaki ◽  
Alexandre Pouget
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Neural Population ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Reward Rate ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Effective Decision Making ◽  
Speed Accuracy

For decisions made under time pressure, effective decision making based on uncertain or ambiguous evidence requires efficient accumulation of evidence over time, as well as appropriately balancing speed and accuracy, known as the speed/accuracy trade-off. For simple unimodal stimuli, previous studies have shown that human subjects set their speed/accuracy trade-off to maximize reward rate. We extend this analysis to situations in which information is provided by multiple sensory modalities. Analyzing previously collected data (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="bib4">Drugowitsch et al., 2014</xref>), we show that human subjects adjust their speed/accuracy trade-off to produce near-optimal reward rates. This trade-off can change rapidly across trials according to the sensory modalities involved, suggesting that it is represented by neural population codes rather than implemented by slow neuronal mechanisms such as gradual changes in synaptic weights. Furthermore, we show that deviations from the optimal speed/accuracy trade-off can be explained by assuming an incomplete gradient-based learning of these trade-offs.

scholarly journals Time to explore: Adaptation of exploration under time pressure

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charley M Wu ◽  
Eric Schulz ◽  
Timothy Joseph Pleskac ◽  
Maarten Speekenbrink
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Lower Cost ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Decision Time ◽  
Cognitive Constraints ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Pressure Changes ◽  
Shed Light

How does time pressure influence exploration and decision-making? We investigate this question using a within-subject design to manipulate decision time (limited vs. unlimited) and use a range of four-armed bandit tasks, designed to independently manipulate uncertainty and expected reward. With limited time, people have less opportunity to perform costly computations, thus shifting the cost-benefit balance of different exploration strategies. Through behavioral, reinforcement learning (RL), reaction time (RT), and evidence accumulation analyses, we show that time pressure changes how people explore and respond to uncertainty. Specifically, participants reduced their uncertainty-directed exploration under time pressure, were less value-directed, and repeated choices more often. Since our analyses relate uncertainty to slower responses and dampened evidence accumulation (i.e., drift rates), this demonstrates a resource-rational shift towards simpler, lower-cost strategies under time pressure. These results shed light on how people adapt their exploration and decision-making strategies to externally imposed cognitive constraints.

scholarly journals Urgency, Leakage, and the Relative Nature of Information Processing in Decision-making

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer S. Trueblood ◽  
Andrew Heathcote ◽  
Nathan J. Evans ◽  
William R. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Modeling Framework ◽  
Independent Manner ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Gating Model ◽  
Simplifying Assumptions

AbstractOver the last decade, there has been a robust debate in decision neuroscience and psychology about what mechanism governs the time course of decision making. Historically, the most prominent hypothesis is that neural architectures accumulate information over time until some threshold is met, the so-called Evidence Accumulation hypothesis. However, most applications of this theory rely on simplifying assumptions, belying a number of potential complexities. Is changing stimulus information perceived and processed in an independent manner or is there a relative component? Does urgency play a role? What about evidence leakage? Although the latter questions have been the subject of recent investigations, most studies to date have been piecemeal in nature, addressing one aspect of the decision process or another. Here we develop a modeling framework, an extension of the Urgency Gating Model, in conjunction with a changing information experimental paradigm to simultaneously probe these aspects of the decision process. Using state-of-the-art Bayesian methods to perform parameter-based inference, we find that 1) information processing is relative with early information influencing the perception of late information, 2) time varying urgency and evidence accumulation are of roughly equal importance in the decision process, and 3) leakage is present with a time scale of ~200-250ms. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study to utilize a changing information paradigm to jointly and quantitatively estimate the temporal dynamics of human decision-making.

scholarly journals Refining understanding of human decision making by testing integrated neurocognitive models of EEG, choice and reaction time

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Nunez
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Accumulation Rates ◽  
Single Trial ◽  
Drift Diffusion ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Visual Encoding ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Trial Evidence

The cognitive process and time course of quick human decision making was evaluated using reaction time, choice distributions, and human electrophysiology as recorded by EEG. These data were used to evaluate drift-diffusion models, a class of decision-making models that assume a stochastic accumulation of evidence on each trial, within hierarchical Bayesian frameworks. The first goal was to elucidate the effect of visual attention on decision making. To this aim two studies were performed. In the first study it was found that individual differences in evidence accumulation rates and non-decision time (preprocessing and motor response times) can be explained by attentional differences as measured by steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) responses to the flicker frequency of signal and noise components of the visual stimulus. Participants who were able to suppress their SSVEP response to visual noise in high frequency bands were able to accumulate correct evidence faster and had shorter non-decision times, leading to more accurate responses and faster response times. In the second study it was found that measures of attention obtained from simultaneous EEG recordings can explain per-trial evidence accumulation rates and perceptual preprocessing times during a visual decision making task. That is, single-trial evoked EEG responses, P200s to the onsets of visual noise and N200s to the onsets of visual signal, explain single-trial evidence accumulation and preprocessing times. The second goal was obtain inference about the time course of quick decision making. A method of estimating and verifying individuals' visual encoding time is proposed using traditional event-related potential (ERP) measures. The possibility of using single-trial N200 and trial-averaged N200 ERP latencies as estimates of human visual encoding time is explored using both simple linear regression and complex hierarchical Bayesian modeling. Posterior distributions of linear-effect parameters suggest that EEG responses to the onset of visual stimuli reflect stimulus encoding times. The possibility of using a verifiable EEG measure of the time course of motor preparation is also explored. Finally, a theoretical cognitive framework for quick decision making is proposed which assumes differential mechanisms of visual encoding, drift-diffusion evidence accumulation, and motor response.

scholarly journals The speed-accuracy tradeoff reveals flexible access to accumulating sensory evidence during human decision making

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Nelli ◽  
Sirawaj Itthipuripat ◽  
Nuttida Rungratsameetaweemana ◽  
John T. Serences
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Response Threshold ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Adaptively Adjusting ◽  
Speed Accuracy ◽  
Accuracy Tradeoff

AbstractDecisions made about identical perceptual stimuli can be radically different under changing task demands. For example, the need to make a fast decision undermines the accuracy of that decision, a well-documented effect termed the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT). Models of the SAT are generally based on theories of decision making in which responses are triggered only after sensory evidence accumulation terminates at a set threshold. Within this accumulate-to-bound framework, speed pressure operates by lowering the response threshold, allowing for faster responses at the expense of accumulated sensory evidence. To empirically examine the mechanisms necessary for adaptively adjusting the speed and accuracy of decisions, we used an event-related potential that indexes sensory evidence accumulation in the human brain. Instead of lowering response thresholds, we found that speed pressure adaptively shifts responses to occur close to where the rate of evidence accumulation peaks. Moreover, responses are not triggered automatically by the termination of the accumulation process, as sensory evidence continues to build after speeded decisions. Together these results suggest that response processes adaptively access accumulating sensory evidence depending on task demands and support parallel over serial models of decision making.

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