Speed-accuracy tradeoff and information processing dynamics

“It has long been recognized that the interpretation of data from such response time tasks is hampered by the ubiquitous speed-accuracy trade-off (Pew, 1969; Wickelgren, 1977): When people aim to respond faster, they do so less accurately.”

“Thus, old and young adults worked on different points of the speed-accuracy curve (e.g., Wickelgren, 1977), complicating the estimation of age differences.”

“…Panel on Climate Change (Corner et al. 2018); the prominence of behavioral research at Yale Climate Connections, Climate Central, Climate Advocacy Lab, and other initiatives (e.g., van der Linden et al. 2018); and growing climate- and energy-related research (e.g., Wong-Parodi et al. 2016).”

“…are smallest when response time approaches floor, where the floor for a given task and an individual subject is the fastest response time at which accuracy begins to rise above chance in response signal paradigms (see, e.g., Dosher, 1984; Ratcliff, 1978; Reed, 1973, 1976; Wickelgren , 1977).”

“Thus, accurate decisions require time for evidence accumulation which leads to a speed–accuracy trade-off: spending less time accumulating evidence produces more errors and faster response times (RTs), whereas spending more time leads to greater accuracy and slower response times (Pachella, 1974; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“This speed–accuracy tradeoff refers to the fact that there is usually a tradeoff between these two measures, with either short reaction times causing many errors, or longer reaction times reducing the number of errors (53).”

“SAT controls for trade-offs and provides conjoint measures of discriminability and information accrual, enabling the measurement of processing speed in circumstances in which discriminability varies (Reed, 1973; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“The functions considered here are speed–accuracy trade-off (SAT) curves and describe the growth of accuracy as a function of time in procedures such as the response signal method (e.g., Ratcliff & Iverson, 1984; Reed, 1976; Wickelgren, 1977 ).”

“This is consistent with research in the memory domain (e.g., Dosher, 1976, 1981; McElree and Dosher, 1989; Ratcliff 1978; Wickelgren 1977), which has established that the probability of retrieving particular items depends on the strength or distinctiveness of the representation itself.”

“Here, assuming a standard speed-accuracy relation, a large gain in RT may be purchased for a small loss in response accuracy (Pachella, 1974; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“For example, in the study of speed–accuracy trade-offs in choice RT (Jennings & Wood, 1977; Osman et al., 2000; Wickelgren, 1977; Wood & Jennings, 1976), the participant’s ability to trade speed for accuracy as instructions change differs from how that participant trades speed for accuracy from trial to trial.”

“Therefore, the control signal mediates a speed-accuracy tradeoff that has been observed experimentally in several tasks (Hale, 1969; Palmer et al., 2005; Reddi and Carpenter, 2000; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“In one of the first studies to do this, Lohman [38] borrowed a method commonly used in cognitive psychology [39,40] in which test takers solved problems under varying deadlines (here, mental rotation problems), allowing the estimation of each individual’s speed–accuracy tradeoff curve [41].”

“It has been argued that studies taking speed-accuracy tradeoffs into consideration are vastly superior to traditional RT studies, such that conclusions made from RT studies can always be called into question (e.g., Luce, 1986; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“…even well-trained participants show a speedaccuracy tradeoff: they may increase accuracy at the expense of Frontiers in Psychology 03 frontiersin.org slower (more careful) responding, or make very quick decisions that are more likely to be erroneous (Schouten and Bekker, 1967; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“…or choice RT) are insufficient for this purpose, as response time differences can be due to differences in decision criteria or discriminability rather than differences in the speed of information processing (Dosher, 1979; McElree & Dosher, 1989; Ratcliff, 1978; Reed, 1973; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“This function has been used in speed-accuracy tradeoff research to summarize the relation between response latency and accuracy (e.g., Lohman, 1986, 1989; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“The absence of a complementary modality/retention interaction in the response latency data likely resulted from several aspects of the task design [36]: (1) subjects were not directed to respond quickly, (2) a generous response window was provided, and (3) subjects were required to wait until the test stimulus had bee…”

“…1984; McElree, 1993, 1996; McElree & tional resources or that a shift of category in-Dosher, 1989, 1993; McElree & Griffith, duces a within list release from proactive in-1995; Reed, 1973, 1976; Wickelgren, 1977; terference. see also Ratcliff, 1978 for an alternative three- Retrieval dynamics.”

“Unfortunately, reaction time measures do not allow us to differentiate between attentional effects on decisional criteria or discriminability rather than on the speed of information processing (Dosher, 1979; McElree & Dosher, 1989; Ratcliff, 1978; Reed, 1973; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“This gives subjects the opportunity to choose an optimal speed accuracy trade-off (Wickelgren, 1977).”

“The first hypothesis states that continuous changes in payoff should result in continuous changes in speed and accuracy (Pew, 1969; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“Wickelgren (1977) shows how, even when payoffs are clear, people may lack the feedback needed to estimate how well they are achieving their desired trade-offs.”

“The response-signal speed–accuracy tradeoff (SAT) procedure is such a method (e.g., Dosher, 1979; Reed, 1973; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“…task dramatically enhances the relative importance of accuracy over speed, we reasoned that this procedure would induce people to maintain a high standard for accuracy on all trials – irrespective of that particular trial's reward and the conscious awareness of the reward (see Wickelgren, 1977).”

“…measures (e.g., performance on a task, brain responses, but especially reaction times) cannot discriminate between effects arising from differences in processing speed (a proxy for mechanism) and differences in representation strength or other aspect (Wickelgren, 1977; Davidson and Martin, 2013).”

“Some previous variants of the oscillatory interference model did not explicitly simulate membrane potential dynamics [but see one of the model variants presented in Burgess (2008) as well as Zilli and Hasselmo (2010)].”

“We further modelled threshold-based decision making in the rCNNs, varying the threshold to control the SAT [34], and compared reaction times to different images between rCNNs and human observers.”

“The empirical phenomenon that participants of equal ability may show completely different behavior depending on whether they value speedy performance or accurate performance is called the speed-accuracy tradeoff (e.g., Wickelgren, 1977).”

“Indeed, it usually requires considerable experimental effort and ingenuity to force the operating point over the full range of the function (Wickelgren, 1977; Wood & Jennings, 1976).”

“Inefficiency scores. Speed � accuracy trading relationships can be subtle and difficult to detect when error rates are low (Pachella, 1974; Wickelgren, 1977 ).”

“The primary benefits of this procedure are that the speed and the accuracy of processing can be measured conjointly within a single task (e.g., Dosher, 1979; Wickelgren, 1977; Reed, 1973, 1976) and that SAT forces participants to fully resolve the sluice in order to make their judgment.”

“The bound height can govern the trade-off between speed and accuracy on RT tasks (Bogacz et al., 2006; Gold and Shadlen, 2007; Link, 1992; Smith and Ratcliff, 2004; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“This phenomenon of speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) is ubiquitous across species and tasks (Schouten and Bekker, 1967; Wickelgren, 1977; Chittka et al., 2009), from collective foraging behavior in insects (Chittka et al., 2003; Franks et al., 2003; Marshall et al., 2006) to simple perceptual decisions…”

“This phenomenon is called the speed–accuracy trade–off (Schouten & Bekker, 1967; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“…used in such experiments, stimulus sensitivity (measured by d ′) is 0 with very short evidence accumulation times, then rises to a finite asymptotic level after about 1 s, remaining constant even if more integration time is allowed (Wickelgren, 1977; Usher and McClelland, 2001; Kiani et al., 2008).”

“Although taking more time to decide improves choice accuracy (Pachella, 1974; Wickelgren, 1977), it also reduces the reward rate, facing animals with a speed–accuracy trade-off (SAT; Myerson and Green, 1995).”

“Secondly, all studies only investigated the relationship between CNV and response time data but ignored the inherent dependence between response time and response accuracy suggested by the speed-accuracy tradeoff (Bogacz et al., 2010; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“We focus on a nondiscretionary task because it removes the trade-off between service quality and speed (Hopp et al., 2007; Wickelgren, 1977; Anand et al., 2011).”

“Therefore, in the present experiments we used a response signal method (Reed, 1973; Wickelgren, 1977 ) to restrict the time available for processing word triads before participants had to make an intuitive coherence judgment.”

“Researchers have shown that participants make tradeoffs when using speed and accuracy assessments (Wickelgren, 1977).”

“Although SAT has been a well-known empirical phenomenon for many years (Wickelgren, 1977), it is still not fully understood.”

“…rats, non-human primates and humans (Bogacz et al., 2010; Forstmann et al., 2010, 2008; Hanks et al., 2014; Heitz and Schall, 2012; Ivanoff et al., 2008; Ratcliff and McKoon, 2008, 1998; Reinagel, 2013; Schouten and Bekker, 1967; Thura and Cisek, 2016; van Veen et al., 2008; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“Decision accuracy was higher for the less difficult mixtures (at both ends of the mixture spectrum), exhibiting a sigmoidal relationship (R = 0.99 ± 0.001, group mean ± SEM; p < 0.0001) typical of 2AFC behavior (Luce, 1986; Ratcliff and McKoon, 2008; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“This remains a viable option given the typical negatively accelerating speed-accuracy functions when PE is very low; shifts in speed-accuracy trade-off result in relatively large RT difference coupled by small PE differences (Wickelgren, 1977).”

“People can emphasize the speed or accuracy of their performance and trade one for the other to suit the task requirements (Pachella, 1974; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“There is generally a trade-off between fidelity and speed to solution, known in cognitive psychology as the speed-accuracy tradeoff (Wickelgren 1977).”

“As this example suggests, speed-accuracy strategy and adjustments can be deliberate and under the control of the individual (Niemi & Naatanen, 1981; Pachella, 1974; Wickelgren, 1977).”

“01, standard error), as well as a significant interaction between ROI and endog264 enous/exogenous conditions (t(56)=-2.”

“(1) provide a quantitative summary of the shape of the SAT function (Reed, 1973; Wickelgren, 1977), k is the asymptotic parameter reflecting discriminability at maximal processing time; d is the intercept parameter reflecting the discrete point in time when discriminability departs from chance (d 0…”

“Action selection and speed can be related through a speed–accuracy trade-off [38] and more skilled performers will have a more favorable speed– accuracy trade-off than less skilled performers; they will take less time to select a suitable action, or will select better actions if allowed only limited time [39] (this sp…”

“Such selectivity represents a departure from the typical assumption used by mathematical psychologists that the rate of sensory evidence accumulation is fixed across AE and SE conditions [for extensive discussion, see Ratcliff and Rouder (1998)], as well as the typical assumption that response caution is the only cogn…”

“This relation is known as the speed– accuracy trade–off (Schouten & Bekker, 1967; Pachella, 1974; Wickelgren, 1977): speeding up leads to more errors and more accurate behavior requires slower responding.”