The speed-accuracy tradeoff: history, physiology, methodology, and behavior.

Richard P Heitz

doi:10.3389/fnins.2014.00150

Abstract

There are few behavioral effects as ubiquitous as the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT). From insects to rodents to primates, the tendency for decision speed to covary with decision accuracy seems an inescapable property of choice behavior. Recently, the SAT has received renewed interest, as neuroscience approaches begin to uncover its neural underpinnings and computational models are compelled to incorporate it as a necessary benchmark. The present work provides a comprehensive overview of SAT. First, I trace its history as a tractable behavioral phenomenon and the role it has played in shaping mathematical descriptions of the decision process. Second, I present a “users guide” of SAT methodology, including a critical review of common experimental manipulations and analysis techniques and a treatment of the typical behavioral patterns that emerge when SAT is manipulated directly. Finally, I review applications of this methodology in several domains.

Highlights

INTRODUCTIONThe notion of speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) is pedestrian. Who has not encountered that a decision, made in haste, often leads to err? Who has not felt the deleterious effects of time pressure on ultimate outcomes? The concept seems so commonsensical as to deserve little interest—an obvious product of nothing more than human limitations
Prima facie, the notion of speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) is pedestrian
Though this provides a more detailed description of how accuracy trades off with RT, this overall conditional accuracy function (CAF) does not address whether similar latencies collected under different deadline conditions are psychologically equivalent

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The notion of speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) is pedestrian. Who has not encountered that a decision, made in haste, often leads to err? Who has not felt the deleterious effects of time pressure on ultimate outcomes? The concept seems so commonsensical as to deserve little interest—an obvious product of nothing more than human limitations. Sequential sampling has emerged as the dominant decision model framework They naturally account for choice behavior under SAT without appeal to a mixture of two states, and with some assumptions, can predict either fast or slow error RT (Laming, 1968; Ratcliff and Rouder, 1998). Another is precision: they provide a quantitative account of mean correct and error RT, accuracy rate, the shapes of correct and error RT distributions, and how each of these change with experimental manipulations such as SAT, response bias, and the strength of sensory evidence. The first is the number of deadline conditions, which depends on both

Wrong and slow

Fast Slow Fast Slow

NEURAL ACTIVITY UNDER SAT

Findings

CONCLUSION