Think fast! The implications of emphasizing urgency in decision-making

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Computational Neuroscience
• Decision Science

Background:

• Evidence accumulation models (EAMs) are standard for understanding decision-making, estimating parameters like drift rate, decision threshold, and non-decision time.
• Recent research questions whether experimental manipulations, such as emphasizing urgency, selectively impact these EAM parameters.
• Conflicting findings necessitate a clearer understanding of how urgency influences decision-making processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conclusively investigate the effects of emphasizing urgent responding on latent parameters within EAMs.
• To compare the outcomes from two prominent EAMs: the diffusion model and the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA).
• To re-analyze existing datasets using advanced model selection techniques.

Main Methods:

• Re-analysis of six previously published datasets.
• Application of two distinct EAMs: the diffusion model and the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA).
• Utilization of state-of-the-art, model selection-based inference methods.

Main Results:

• Both the diffusion model and LBA indicated that emphasizing urgency decreases decision threshold.
• The diffusion model suggested a decrease in non-decision time under urgency, while the LBA suggested a decrease in drift rate.
• Crucially, both models agreed that emphasizing urgency does not selectively influence the decision threshold.

Conclusions:

• Assumptions about experimental manipulations and EAM specifications may need revision.
• Urgency emphasis impacts multiple decision-making parameters, not just the decision threshold.
• The choice of EAM can influence the interpretation of how urgency affects cognitive processes.