Drift-diffusion modeling of accuracy and reaction times: A deeper insight into retrospective attention

Retrospective attention refers to the prioritization of contents held in working memory, a process investigated using the retro-cueing paradigm. This process is evidenced by the retro-cueing benefit, characterized by better performance for retrospectively cued trials. However, traditional statistical analyses fall short in distinguishing between decisional and nondecisional processes underlying this benefit. A pivotal contribution by Shepherdson et al. (2018) addressed this gap by applying drift-diffusion modeling which integrates both accuracy and reaction time measures to disentangle these processes. Their key contribution lies in demonstrating that retro-cues enhance the quality of working memory contents and enable their retrieval in advance of decision making-effects that occur independently of shifts in decision criteria. Building on Shepherdson et al.'s work, we encourage future drift-diffusion model-based retro-cueing studies to pursue precise, mutually exclusive hypothesis testing and to integrate behavioral and neural data to more clearly distinguish between competing explanations of the retro-cueing benefit. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).