- Title
- Examining the assumptions of cognitive models of decision making
- Creator
- Narraway, Thomas
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2024
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Decision making is studied almost as often as people make decisions. One phenomenon that is of particular interest to cognitive psychologists is the way time pressure interacts with decision making. There is a trade between being accurate and being quick, called the speed-accuracy trade off (SAT). When exploring the SAT methodologies and (scientific) models must maintain selective influence; which means that one aspect of the design should influence only one ‘real-world’ phenomena. However Dutilh et al. (2019) and Rae, Heathcote, Donkin, Averell, and Brown (2014) found failure to maintain selective influence. This thesis aims to determine weather these failures are caused by methodological issues, modelling issues, both, or neither. Since many of the experiments observing or using the SAT make extensive use of verbal and written instructions experiment 1 aimed to determine if it was this over-reliance on language that was causing failures of selective influence of the methodology. 132 participants performed a random dot motion (RDM) task. Participants were divided into two groups: one using the current standard IBM; and the other using a novel methodology called the CDM. There was decisive evidence that the SAT manipulation affected accuracy (BF10 = 64.8) and response times (BF10 = 103.687). This suggests that the novel methodology is comparable to the instruction-based methodology, potentially making it a good tool for exploring selective influence. Experiment 2a and 2b aimed to use the novel methodology to determine how many types of trade participants are able to generate, and weather this insight would help understanding selective influence. A total of 70 were recruited for a between-subjects modification of experiment 1 which featured five different levels of SAT manipulation, and a total of 150 were recruited for a within-subjects variant of the same experiment. SAT manipulation significantly affected accuracy in both the between-subjects (BFInclusion = 37.532) and within (BFInclusion = 14.118), as well as response time in the between (BFInclusion > 1000) and within-subjects (BFInclusion = 212.739) variants. Manifest variables and model parameters seemed to form three clusters in the novel and IBM, suggesting that participants may be unable to perform more than this amount. Due to the complicated nature of analysing within-subjects model parameters the outcomes of experiment 2b are limited. Experiment 3 elaborated on the within-subjects design and aimed to determine how fast a deadline can be made before performance was impossible, and to determine if selective influence could be maintained across a within-subjects experiment. A total of 300 were recruited and asked to perform 12 minutes worth of trials. Evidence was decisive that accuracy (BFInclusion = 59.713) and response times (BFInclusion > 1000) were affected by the within-subjects SAT manipulation. It was concluded that participants should not be given censoring deadlines faster than 500ms as this represented the lowest feasible compromise between accuracy, response times, and censoring. Evidence was found to suggest that selective influence may not have been maintained, but as this was a within-subjects experiment testing of this evidence was limited. In total this thesis demonstrated a viable and useful alternative to the IBM in the form of the CDM, that participants are likely to be unable to perform more than three levels of SAT manipulation, and that selective influence may be failing due to methodological issues. It is recommended that further research occur on the methodologies used to manipulate the SAT, and examples are provided.
- Subject
- speed-accuracy trade-off; cognitive psychology; mathematical modelling; visual discrimination; decision making; reaction time; random dot motion
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1511397
- Identifier
- uon:56489
- Rights
- Copyright 2024 Thomas Narraway
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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