Temporal Context and Rhythmic Effects on Simple Choice

重要的是要了解我们社会中的人，包括我们的领导人和处于关键任务位置的人，如何在各种压力环境下做出决定。认知心理学的一个主要研究领域描述了人们如何将决策作为一个信息积累的过程。这些理论表明，如果人们有足够的时间积累相关证据，他们会做出更好（更准确）的选择。信息积累理论的一个优点是，它们解释了为什么在压力下的快速反应往往是错误的反应。大量实验证据支持信息积累理论。然而，这一证据来自嵌入在更大的实验背景中的实验任务，该背景包括时间限制，例如何时呈现任务的不同组成部分以及何时需要决策。也就是说，心理学实验（以及许多现实世界的决策问题）有一个节奏，在这个节奏中，决策问题被构建和解决，这个节奏也对决策绩效产生影响。任务节奏的重要性强调了另一个理论观点，强调选择环境的动态方面。从这个角度来看，注意力被视为一个与潜在任务节奏相协调的动态过程，了解环境的节奏如何与人们如何有效地集中注意力相互作用，对于理解决策过程至关重要。这一建议提供了一个完整的理论，正式结合了信息积累和动态出席的方法。提出的实验测试了混合模型关于任务难度、节奏和节奏的影响以及指示和反馈的作用的预测。这项研究意义重大，因为它将选择行为与影响人们注意力的环境因素联系起来，从而使他们或多或少有效地“收听”相关信息。它将提高我们对健康个体的选择表现的理解，这些个体有时必须在时间压力下做出关键的决定，而且，最终，患有各种注意力功能障碍（例如，注意力缺陷障碍，自闭症等）的个体的选择表现。

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.).