Temporal Context and Rhythmic Effects on Simple Choice

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

It is important to understand how people in our society, including our leaders and people in mission-critical positions, make decisions in various stressful contexts. A major area of research in cognitive psychology describes how people make decisions as a process of information accumulation over time. These theories state that people make better (more accurate) choices if they have enough time to accumulate relevant evidence. A strength of the information accumulation theories is that they explain why speedy responding, perhaps under stress, is often erroneous responding. Much experimental evidence supports the information accumulation theories. However, this evidence comes from experimental tasks embedded within a larger experimental context, a context that includes temporal constraints such as when the different components of the task are presented and when decisions are required. That is, psychology experiments (and many real-world decision problems) have a rhythm within which decision problems are framed and solved, and this rhythm also exerts an influence on decision performance. The importance of task rhythm is underscored by another theoretical perspective which emphasizes the dynamic aspects of the choice environment. In this perspective, attention is viewed as a dynamic process attuned to the underlying task rhythm, and understanding how the pace of the environment interacts with how effectively people focus attention is critical for understanding the decision-making process. This proposal offers an integrated theory that formally combines the information accumulation and dynamic attending approaches. The proposed experiments test predictions of the hybrid model with regard to effects of task difficulty, pacing and rhythm, and the role of instructions and feedback. This research is significant because it links choice behaviors to contextual factors that shape people's attention, thus allowing them to "tune in" to relevant information more or less effectively. It will improve our understanding of choice performance of healthy individuals who must render sometimes critical decisions under time stress, and also, eventually, choice performance of individuals who suffer from a variety of attentional dysfunctions (e.g., attention deficit disorders, autism, etc.).