fMRI Evidence for a Dual Process Account of the Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff in Decision-Making
Open Access
- 9 July 2008
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Public Library of Science (PLoS) in PLOS ONE
- Vol. 3 (7), e2635
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0002635
Abstract
The speed and accuracy of decision-making have a well-known trading relationship: hasty decisions are more prone to errors while careful, accurate judgments take more time. Despite the pervasiveness of this speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) in decision-making, its neural basis is still unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we show that emphasizing the speed of a perceptual decision at the expense of its accuracy lowers the amount of evidence-related activity in lateral prefrontal cortex. Moreover, this speed-accuracy difference in lateral prefrontal cortex activity correlates with the speed-accuracy difference in the decision criterion metric of signal detection theory. We also show that the same instructions increase baseline activity in a dorso-medial cortical area involved in the internal generation of actions. These findings suggest that the SAT is neurally implemented by modulating not only the amount of externally-derived sensory evidence used to make a decision, but also the internal urge to make a response. We propose that these processes combine to control the temporal dynamics of the speed-accuracy trade-off in decision-making.Keywords
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