eCite Digital Repository
The Hare and the Tortoise: Emphasizing Speed Can Change the Evidence Used to Make Decisions
Citation
Rae, B and Heathcote, A and Donkin, C and Averell, L and Brown, S, The Hare and the Tortoise: Emphasizing Speed Can Change the Evidence Used to Make Decisions, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40, (5) pp. 1226-1243. ISSN 0278-7393 (2014) [Refereed Article]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2014 American Psychological Association
DOI: doi:10.1037/a0036801
Abstract
Decision-makers effortlessly balance the need for urgency against the need for caution. Theoretical and neurophysiological accounts have explained this tradeoffsolely in terms of the quantity of evidence required to trigger a decision (the "threshold"). This explanation has also been used as a benchmark test for evaluating new models of decision making, but the explanation itself has not been carefully tested against data. We rigorously test the assumption that emphasizing decision speed versus decision accuracy selectively influences only decision thresholds. In data from a new brightness discrimination experiment we found that emphasizing decision speed over decision accuracy not only decreases the amount of evidence required for a decision but also decreases the quality of information being accumulated during the decision process. This result was consistent for 2 leading decision-making models and in a model-free test. We also found the same model-based results in archival data from a lexical decision task (reported by Wagenmakers, Ratcliff, Gomez, & McKoon, 2008) and new data from a recognition memory task. We discuss implications for theoretical development and applications.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
---|---|
Keywords: | Decision making; Evidence accumulation; Response time; Sequential sampling; Speed accuracy tradeoff |
Research Division: | Psychology |
Research Group: | Cognitive and computational psychology |
Research Field: | Decision making |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in psychology |
UTAS Author: | Heathcote, A (Professor Andrew Heathcote) |
ID Code: | 98932 |
Year Published: | 2014 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 97 |
Deposited By: | Medicine |
Deposited On: | 2015-03-10 |
Last Modified: | 2017-10-31 |
Downloads: | 0 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page