Changes In Decision Criteria Research Articles

Social influence and social identity: A diffusion model analysis.

Building on the seminal studies of Solomon Asch and Muzafer Sherif, recent research has advanced our understanding of the mechanisms underlying social influence by applying a diffusion model analysis. Here, we combined the social identity approach to social influence with a diffusion model analysis to unravel the mechanisms underlying social influence. In particular, we aimed to disentangle whether the difference between in-group and out-group influence on perceptual decision-making is driven by a judgmental bias (i.e., changes in decision criteria) or a perceptual bias (i.e., changes in the uptake of sensory information). Preregistered analyses indicated that in-groups exerted stronger social influence than out-groups because in-groups induced a stronger perceptual bias than out-groups. This finding is in line with the single process assumption of the social identity approach because it implicates that the single process driving social influence (i.e., self-categorisation) translates into a change in a single subprocess of decision-making (i.e., biased information uptake). In conclusion, our results highlight that our theoretical understanding of social influence can be expanded by integrating the social identity approach with a diffusion model analysis.

A multi-criteria evolutionary-based algorithm as a regional scale decision support system to optimize nitrogen consumption rate; A case study in North China plain

Nitrogen mismanagement is a serious concern worldwide since farmers usually overuse chemical fertilizers to increase yield, and consequently their income. The oversupply of chemical fertilizers, particularly nitrogen-based fertilizers, has brought about serious environmental problems, among others, deterioration of water quality, global warming impacts, soil acidification, and water eutrophication. In the present study, a decision support system coupled with an evolutionary algorithm was developed to optimize nitrogen consumption rate in a Wheat-Maize rotation system in the North China Plain. The developed model integrated eight indicators, i.e., yield, nitrogen uptake by grain and whole plant, economic, enviro-economic, nitrogen use efficiency, nitrogen balance, and single score (i.e., an aggregated and normalized environmental indicator), to propose the optimal consumption rates. The indicators, used in this model, were measured and/or calculated from a three-year field experiment conducted in six different monitoring sites in four Provinces. Such approach helped introduce the spatially explicit optimal nitrogen application rates for different regions. Having integrated enviro-economic indices, the decision support system returned regional optimum consumption rates which would maximize profit and minimize environmental pollution. Moreover, the decision support system was also supplemented with two sensitivity analysis models, from one hand, to investigate the consequences of changes in decision criteria, and from the other hand, return a range of optimal consumption rate for each specific region. The results achieved showed that the proposed approach succeeded in finding the best nitrogen practices for each specific region and also returning a safe range for nitrogen application in order to guarantee a high-profit and an environmental friendly agricultural production.

A Role for the Superior Colliculus in Decision Criteria

Simple decisions arise from the accumulation of sensory evidence toward a fixed threshold or criterion. When a criterion is reached, a decision is made and a choice response is initiated. Where or how the decision criterion is signaled in the brain remains unknown. We show that neuronal activity in the superior colliculus (SC) predicts changes in decision criteria. Using a novel ‘Yes-No’ task that isolates changes in decision criterion from changes in decision sensitivity, and computing neuronal measures of sensitivity and criterion, we find that SC neuronal activity correlates with the decision criterion regardless of the location of the choice report. We also show that electrical manipulation of activity within the SC produces changes in decisions consistent with changes in decision criteria and are largely independent of the choice report location. Our correlational and causal results together provide strong evidence that SC activity signals the position of a decision criterion.

A Role for the Superior Colliculus in Decision Criteria

Simple decisions arise from the evaluation of sensory evidence. But decisions are determined bymore than just evidence. Individuals establish internal decision criteria that influence how they respond. Where or how decision criteria are established in the brain remains poorly understood. Here, we show that neuronal activity in the superior colliculus (SC) predicts changes in decision criteria. Using a novel "Yes-No" task that isolates changes in decision criterion from changes in decision sensitivity, and computing neuronal measures of sensitivity and criterion, we find that SC neuronal activity correlates with the decision criterion regardless of the location of the choice report. We also show that electrical manipulation of activity within the SC produces changes in decisions consistent with changes in decision criteria and are largely independent of the choice report location. Our correlational and causal results together provide strong evidence that SC activity signals the position of a decision criterion. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Measures of metacognition on signal-detection theoretic models.

Analyzing metacognition, specifically knowledge of accuracy of internal perceptual, memorial, or other knowledge states, is vital for many strands of psychology, including determining the accuracy of feelings of knowing and discriminating conscious from unconscious cognition. Quantifying metacognitive sensitivity is however more challenging than quantifying basic stimulus sensitivity. Under popular signal-detection theory (SDT) models for stimulus classification tasks, approaches based on Type II receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves or Type II d-prime risk confounding metacognition with response biases in either the Type I (classification) or Type II (metacognitive) tasks. A new approach introduces meta-d': The Type I d-prime that would have led to the observed Type II data had the subject used all the Type I information. Here, we (a) further establish the inconsistency of the Type II d-prime and ROC approaches with new explicit analyses of the standard SDT model and (b) analyze, for the first time, the behavior of meta-d' under nontrivial scenarios, such as when metacognitive judgments utilize enhanced or degraded versions of the Type I evidence. Analytically, meta-d' values typically reflect the underlying model well and are stable under changes in decision criteria; however, in relatively extreme cases, meta-d' can become unstable. We explore bias and variance of in-sample measurements of meta-d' and supply MATLAB code for estimation in general cases. Our results support meta-d' as a useful measure of metacognition and provide rigorous methodology for its application. Our recommendations are useful for any researchers interested in assessing metacognitive accuracy.

Different types of feedback change decision criterion and sensitivity differently in perceptual learning

In (perceptual) learning, performance improves with practice either by changes in sensitivity or decision criterion. Often, changes in sensitivity are regarded as the appropriate measure of learning while changes in criterion are considered unavoidable nuisances. Very little is known about the distinguishing characteristics of both learning types. Here, we show first that block feedback, which affects sensitivity, does not affect criterion. Second, contrary to changes in sensitivity, changes in decision criterion are limited to the training session and do not transfer overnight. Finally, training with biased trial-wise feedback induces a sensitivity change such that a left offset Vernier may be perceived as a right offset Vernier.

Effects of category-specific costs on neural systems for perceptual decision-making.

Perceptual judgments are often biased by prospective losses, leading to changes in decision criteria. Little is known about how and where sensory evidence and cost information interact in the brain to influence perceptual categorization. Here we show that prospective losses systematically bias the perception of noisy face-house images. Asymmetries in category-specific cost were associated with enhanced blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal in a frontoparietal network. We observed selective activation of parahippocampal gyrus for changes in category-specific cost in keeping with the hypothesis that loss functions enact a particular task set that is communicated to visual regions. Across subjects, greater shifts in decision criteria were associated with greater activation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Our results support a hypothesis that costs bias an intermediate representation between perception and action, expressed via general effects on frontal cortex, and selective effects on extrastriate cortex. These findings indicate that asymmetric costs may affect a neural implementation of perceptual decision making in a similar manner to changes in category expectation, constituting a step toward accounting for how prospective losses are flexibly integrated with sensory evidence in the brain.

Components of visual prior entry

The prior entry hypothesis contends that attention accelerates sensory processing, shortening the time to perception. Typical observations supporting the hypothesis may be explained equally well by response biases, changes in decision criteria, or sensory facilitation. In a series of experiments conducted to discriminate among the potential mechanisms, observers judged the simultaneity or temporal order of two stimuli, to one of which attention was oriented by exogenous, endogenous, gaze-directed, or multiple exogenous cues. The results suggest that prior entry effects are primarily caused by sensory facilitation and attentional modifications of the decision mechanism, with only a small part possibly due to an attention-dependent sensory acceleration.

Frontal eye field neurons signal changes in decision criteria

Flexible links between sensory stimuli and behavioral responses underlie many cognitive processes. One process that contributes to flexible decision-making is categorization. Some categories are innate or overlearned, but, in many cases, category boundaries represent flexible decision criteria that can shift on the fly to adapt to changes in the environment. The ability to shift category boundaries allows decision-making to adapt to changing circumstances. We found that monkeys were able to switch rapidly between two category boundaries when classifying the speed of a moving dot pattern and that neurons in monkey frontal eye field (FEF) changed their activity when the boundary changed. The responses of a subpopulation of FEF neurons that were sensitive to both stimulus and boundary speed were used to classify the stimuli as accurately as the monkeys' performance.

Cross-modal interaction between vision and hearing: A speed-accuracy analysis

Cross-modal facilitation of response time (RT) is said to occur in a selective attention task when the introduction of an irrelevant sound increases the speed at which visual stimuli are detected and identified. To investigate the source of the facilitation in RT, we asked participants to rapidly identify the color of lights in the quiet and when accompanied by a pulse of noise. The resulting measures of accuracy and RT were used to derive speed-accuracy trade-off functions (SATFs) separately for the noise and the no-noise conditions. The two resulting SATFs have similar slopes and intercepts and, thus, can be treated as overlapping segments of a single function. That speeded identification of color with and without the presence of noise can be described by one SATF suggests, in turn, that cross-modal facilitation of RT represents a change in decision criterion induced by the auditory stimulus. Analogous changes in decision criteria might also underlie other measures of cross-modal interactions, such as auditory enhancement of brightness judgments.

The distinctiveness heuristic in false recognition and false recall

The effects of generative processing on false recognition and recall were examined in four experiments using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In each experiment, a Generate condition in which subjects generated studied words from audio anagrams was compared to a Control condition in which subjects simply listened to studied words presented normally. Rates of false recognition and false recall were lower for critical lures associated with generated lists, than for critical lures associated with control lists, but only in between-subjects designs. False recall and recognition did not differ when generate and control conditions were manipulated within-subjects. This pattern of results is consistent with the distinctiveness heuristic (Schacter, Israel, & Racine, 1999), a metamemorial decision-based strategy whereby global changes in decision criteria lead to reductions of false memories. This retrieval-based monitoring mechanism appears to operate in a similar fashion in reducing false recognition and false recall.

The Dynamics of Experimentally Induced Criterion Shifts.

Investigations of decision making have typically assumed stationarity, even though commonly observed "context effects" are dynamic by definition. Mirror effects are an important class of context effects that can be explained by changes in participants' decision criteria. When easy and difficult conditions are blocked alternately and a mirror effect is observed, participants must repeatedly change their decision criteria. The authors investigated the time course of these criterion changes and observed the buildup of mirror effects on a trial-by-trial basis. The data are consistent with slow, systematic changes in decision criteria that lag behind stimulus changes. The length of this lag is considerable: analysis of a simple dynamic signal-detection model suggests participants take an average of around 14 trials to adjust to new decision environments. This trial-level measurement of experimentally induced changes has implications for traditional blockwise analyses of data and for models of decision making.

Components of visual prior entry

The prior entry hypothesis contends that attention accelerates sensory processing, shortening the time to perception. Typical observations supporting the hypothesis may be explained equally well by response biases, changes in decision criteria, or sensory facilitation. In a series of experiments conducted to discriminate among the potential mechanisms, observers judged the simultaneity or temporal order of two stimuli, to one of which attention was oriented by exogenous, endogenous, gaze-directed, or multiple exogenous cues. The results suggest that prior entry effects are primarily caused by sensory facilitation and attentional modifications of the decision mechanism, with only a small part possibly due to an attention-dependent sensory acceleration.

Effects of exercise on aspects of visual function

Strenuous exercise has been reported to affect various aspects of visual and ocular function. In the first of two experiments, the effects of cycling, jogging and stair running on a range of visual functions were examined. None of these forms of exercise was found to have any significant effect on visual acuity, refractive error, dark focus, amplitude of accommodation or pupil size. Contrast sensitivity (CS), measured by an ascending method of limits (AML), was found to improve significantly after cycling and jogging but not after stair running. To investigate if the apparent improvement in CS was related to a change in ‘sensitivity’ or a change in decision criteria, CS was re-measured before and after cycling using both the AML and a ‘criterion-free’ method of constant stimuli (MOCS) procedure. Results obtained using the AML, confirmed the findings of the first experiment. However, results obtained using the MOCS procedure showed no significant change with exercise. This suggests that the improvement in CS found using the AML was due to a shift in subjects' decision criteria rather than a physiological change in ‘sensitivity’. It is argued that this change in decision criteria may be related to the positive mood changes which have been found to occur after exercise. This study demonstrates the importance of differentiating between changes in ‘sensitivity’ and changes in decision criteria especially where mood or motivation (and hence decision criteria) may be confounded with the independent variable. This is particularly important when evaluating the effects of exercise on visual function or evaluating the efficacy of vision training.

Effects of exercise on aspects of visual function

SummaryStrenuous exercise has been reported to affect various aspects of visual and ocular function. In the first of two experiments, the effects of cycling, jogging and stair running on a range of visual functions were examined. None of these forms of exercise was found to have any significant effect on visual acuity, refractive error, dark focus, amplitude of accommodation or pupil size. Contrast sensitivity (CS), measured by an ascending method of limits (AML), was found to improve significantly after cycling and jogging but not after stair running. To investigate if the apparent improvement in CS was related to a change in ‘sensitivity’ or a change in decision criteria, CS was re‐measured before and after cycling using both the AML and a ‘criterion‐free’ method of constant stimuli (MOCS) procedure. Results obtained using the AML, confirmed the findings of the first experiment. However, results obtained using the MOCS procedure showed no significant change with exercise. This suggests that the improvement in CS found using the AML was due to a shift in subjects' decision criteria rather than a physiological change in ‘sensitivity’. It is argued that this change in decision criteria may be related to the positive mood changes which have been found to occur after exercise. This study demonstrates the importance of differentiating between changes in ‘sensitivity’ and changes in decision criteria especially where mood or motivation (and hence decision criteria) may be confounded with the independent variable. This is particularly important when evaluating the effects of exercise on visual function or evaluating the efficacy of vision training.

Lexical access and lexical decision: mechanisms of frequency sensitivity

Three models of lexical access and lexical decision—the serial search model, the two-dictionary model, and a parallel-access, criterion-bias model—were tested in a large experiment (148 subjects, 458 words) comparing the effects of mixed- and blocked-frequency presentation on correct lexical decision times. Reaction times were faster for high-frequency words in the blocked, pure-frequency condition than in the mixed-frequency one; medium-frequency words showed less of a difference; and low-frequency words showed no appreciable difference at all. These results corroborate and extend Glanzer and Ehrenreich's ( Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior , 1979, 18, 381–398) empirical results with this paradigm. They strongly imply that changes in decision criteria underlie the reaction time differences Glanzer and Ehrepreich and we found. This evidence places further constraints on theories of lexical access, which may be more easily accomodated by parallel models than by serial ones. Glanzer and Ehrenreich's two-dictionary model is not supported by this data.

Does recognition memory improve with age?

In order to test the hypothesis that recognition is a developmentally stable component of the memory system, age differences in recognition of faces were examined while controlling for nonmemory factors that might contribute to differences between the groups. Three groups of children (mean ages: 3 years, 4 months; 4 years, 9 months; and 6 years, 11 months) and a group of college students were tested on a recognition task and a similar matching task. The results indicated no change in recognition across the preschool years but an improvement from the later preschool period to the first grade. Further analyses indicated that this improvement was not due to changes in decision criteria or perceptual skills. These findings call into question the view that recognition is a developmentally invariant component of the memory system.

Applications of Signal Detection Theory in Monitoring Performance and Medical Diagnosis

Signal detection theory (SDT) provides a means for distinguishing between accuracy and decision strategies in evaluating observer performance in decision-making tasks. This is useful in determining which general human engineering principles, for example, design, or selection and training, are likely to be effective in a particular situation. Two illustrative areas of application are discussed: (1) Performance decrements in monitoring (vigilance) tasks result either from a decrement in observer sensitivity or from changes in decision criteria. A taxonomic approach is outlined which predicts which of these performance trends will occur in a particular monitoring situation. This enables an identification of those cases where sensitivity decrements occur, for which design changes may be needed and where training techniques are unlikely to be helpful in enhancing performance. (2) Poor reader performance in medical diagnosis may result from inappropriate reporting criteria, especially when disease prevalence and decision goals vary. A study is reported in which staff radiologists, but not radiology residents, were found to vary their reporting criteria appropriately in response to a change in disease prevalence. Staff radiologists were superior to the residents in disease detection and classification, but the residents were not significantly worse if both first and second choice diagnoses were analyzed. ROC measures of diagnostic accuracy were independent of disease prevalence and reporting criteria. The results have implications for the identification of training criteria and the assessment of system accuracy in diagnostic radiology. These two studies illustrate the general usefulness of SDT in identifying target areas for the application of human engineering principles.

Mental size scaling examined

Observers made same-different shape judgments of stimuli that were identical in shape and size different in shape but not in size, or differed in relative size along a number of steps for both same- and different- shaped forms. "Same" judgment RTs increased monotonically with increases in the magnitude of the relative size difference. In contrast, "different" judgment RTs were unaffected by changes in relative size. A second experiment in which stimulus presentation was successive rather than simultaneous yielded essentially the same results. Consideration was given to a dual- process model in which a time-consuming analog process normalizes stimuli that are size discrepant prior to a comparison stage that is operative for those structures responsible for "same" decisions but not for "different" judgments. Some evidence that seems inconsistent with a normalization process which operates prior to contact with memory was discussed, and an alternative explanation in which the early detection of a size difference causes changes in decision criteria was suggested.

An investigation into changes in decision criteria and other details of a decision-making task

A method is described for constructing a decision-making task which satisfies the formal assumptions of signal-detection theory. Two experiments using this task are described. It is shown that Ss did not maintain a constant likelihood-ratio criterion and, hence, that the subjective d’ was always less than the true value, even though Ss knew what that value was. Introducing confidence judgments did not significantly affect d’. It is suggested that the method described is a useful one for examining decision responses.