Dataset Information

The limits of deliberation in a perceptual decision task.

ABSTRACT: While it is commonly assumed that decisions taken slowly result in superior outcomes, is it possible that optimal decision making does not always require sacrificing speed? For odor categorization decisions, it was previously shown that rats use <300 ms regardless of difficulty, but these findings could be interpreted as a tradeoff of accuracy for speed. Here, by systematically manipulating the task contingencies, we demonstrate that this is the maximum time over which sampling time can improve accuracy. Furthermore, we show that decision accuracy increases at no temporal cost when rats can better anticipate either the identity of stimuli or the required timing of responses. These experiments suggest that uncertainty in odor category decisions arises from noise sources that fluctuate slowly from trial-to-trial rather than rapidly within trials and that category decisions in other species and modalities might likewise be optimally served by rapid choices.

SUBMITTER: Zariwala HA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3711252 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The limits of deliberation in a perceptual decision task.

Zariwala Hatim A HA Kepecs Adam A Uchida Naoshige N Hirokawa Junya J Mainen Zachary F ZF

Neuron 20130328 2

While it is commonly assumed that decisions taken slowly result in superior outcomes, is it possible that optimal decision making does not always require sacrificing speed? For odor categorization decisions, it was previously shown that rats use <300 ms regardless of difficulty, but these findings could be interpreted as a tradeoff of accuracy for speed. Here, by systematically manipulating the task contingencies, we demonstrate that this is the maximum time over which sampling time can improve ...[more]

PMID: 23541901

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Project description:BackgroundVibrotactile discrimination tasks have been used to examine decision making processes in the presence of perceptual uncertainty, induced by barely discernible frequency differences between paired stimuli or by the presence of embedded noise. One lesser known property of such tasks is that decisions made on a single trial may be biased by information from prior trials. An example is the time-order effect whereby the presentation order of paired stimuli may introduce differences in accuracy. Subjects perform better when the first stimulus lies between the second stimulus and the global mean of all stimuli on the judged dimension ("preferred" time-orders) compared to the alternative presentation order ("nonpreferred" time-orders). This has been conceptualised as a "drift" of the first stimulus representation towards the global mean of the stimulus-set (an internal standard). We describe the influence of prior information in relation to the more traditionally studied factors of interest in a classic discrimination task.MethodologySixty subjects performed a vibrotactile discrimination task with different levels of uncertainty parametrically induced by increasing task difficulty, aperiodic stimulus noise, and changing the task instructions whilst maintaining identical stimulus properties (the "context").Principal findingsThe time-order effect had a greater influence on task performance than two of the explicit factors-task difficulty and noise-but not context. The influence of prior information increased with the distance of the first stimulus from the global mean, suggesting that the "drift" velocity of the first stimulus towards the global mean representation was greater for these trials.Conclusions/significanceAwareness of the time-order effect and prior information in general is essential when studying perceptual decision making tasks. Implicit mechanisms may have a greater influence than the explicit factors under study. It also affords valuable insights into basic mechanisms of information accumulation, storage, sensory weighting, and processing in neural circuits.

Dataset Information

The limits of deliberation in a perceptual decision task.

Publications

The limits of deliberation in a perceptual decision task.

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