On the flexibility of strategies for center estimation

When subjects are asked to indicate the center of a spatially distributed stimulus, the features that control their responses tend to vary (1) across subjects and (2) as stimulus properties are altered. Here we ask: can subjects bring these different response tendencies under top-down control? In each of three tasks, all using briefly displayed, Gaussian dot-clouds, subjects were trained to perform different center-estimation responses. In the "mass task," the target was the centroid of the dots. In the "hull task," the target was the centroid of the region circumscribed by the convex hull of the dot-cloud. In the "hull-vertex task," the target was the centroid of the vertices of the convex hull. Subjects were able to perform each of the mass- and hull-tasks accurately and reliably. However, they found the hull-vertex task more difficult; errors were substantially larger in this task, and responses tended to be closer to both of the hull- and mass-task centers. The finding that subjects can intentionally target either the centroid of the dots in the stimulus or the centroid of the stimulus convex hull suggests that individual differences in feedback-free experiments may reflect idiosyncratic decisions by different subjects about what combination of these statistics to use in responding.