Abstract
Many everyday decisions require an accurate perception of how much time has passed since a previous event. Although humans estimate time intervals with a high degree of mean accuracy, the precision of estimations varies greatly between individuals. In situations in which accurate timing is rewarded but responding too early is punished, the optimal amount of risk is directly dependent on the precision of the timer. Previously, it was found that humans and rodents displayed near-optimal adjustment of their mean response time based on their individual precision and the level of punishment. It is as of yet unknown whether these strategies of optimality in interval timing are specific to the timing domain, or instead reflect an ability that generalizes to other sensorimotor modalities of decision making. Here, we address this by combining a temporal reproduction experiment and a distance estimation experiment with an identical reward scheme. We found that participants approached optimality in both tasks, but generally underadjusted their responses in the face of high risk. As this individual adjustment was consistent over modalities, these results can best be explained by assuming that the adjustment of behavior towards optimal performance is driven by a modality independent mechanism.
Highlights
Many everyday decisions require an accurate perception of how much time has passed since a previous event
This is a signature of rational adaptation, as their noisier response times would more often trigger a costly reset of the waiting period if the aim of their response times were closer to the target duration
The procedure regarding points and feedback was identical to the timing task: Participants earned 5 points for touching the target, but points would be deducted in Blocks 2 and 4 if their response was too close to the start circle
Summary
Participants performed the distance estimation 250 times, spread over five experimental blocks, preceded by 50 practice trials. The procedure regarding points and feedback was identical to the timing task: Participants earned 5 points for touching the target, but points would be deducted in Blocks 2 and 4 if their response was too close to the start circle (see Table 1). Adjustment was calculated as the difference between mean responses of the blocks with punishment and Block 1 and were used as dependent continuous variables (in seconds for the timing task and mm for the distance estimation task). To assess the relationship between the performance in the two different tasks a model was estimated with timing optimality (i.e., the difference between the actual adjustment and the optimal adjustment) as continuous dependent variable, distance optimality as continuous fixed factor, and punishment level as categorical fixed factor. Fixed factors that yielded a model with a BF over 3 were included in the models (Wagenmakers, 2007)
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