Decision making in slow and rapid reaching: Sacrificing success to minimize effort

Abstract

Current studies on visuomotor decision making come to inconsistent conclusions regarding the optimality with which these decisions are made. When executing rapid reaching movements under uncertainty, humans tend to automatically select optimal movement paths that take into account the position of all potential targets (spatial averaging). In contrast, humans rarely employ optimal strategies when making decisions on whether to pursue two action goals simultaneously or prioritise one goal over another. Here, we manipulated whether spatial averaging or pre-selection of a single target would provide the optimal strategy by varying the spatial separation between two potential movement targets as well as the time available for movement execution. In Experiment 1, we aimed to determine the time needed to reach for targets with small and large separation between them and to measure baseline strategies under low time pressure. Given generous time limits, participants did not employ a pure averaging approach but instead tended to pre-select the target that was easiest to reach and corrected their movement path inflight if required. In Experiment 2, a strict time limit was set such that the optimal strategy to reach the correct target successfully depended on the separation between the potential targets: for small separations, there was enough time to employ averaging strategies, but higher success for larger separations required pre-selecting the final target instead. While participants varied in the strategies they preferred, none of them flexibly adjusted their movement strategies depending on the spatial separation of the targets. In Experiment 3, we confirm the bias towards targets that are easiest to reach and show that this comes at the expense of overall task success. The results suggest a strong tendency for humans to minimize immediate movement effort and a general failure to adapt movement strategies flexibly with changes in the task parameters.

Modulation of Initial Movement for Double Potential Targets With Specific Time Constraints

“…If such a cognitive bias is at work, it could be a strong impediment to strategy optimization in situations with insufficient time to execute the targeted action. Importantly, the same tendency has been consistently observed in our previous studies 27 and in other recent studies 26,32 , necessitating the identification of its causes.…”

“…In this case, an important decision about the strategy for two potential targets is whether to focus on one target (i.e., a predetermined strategy) or to take both targets into account (i.e., a choice-reaction strategy). Previous studies confirmed that humans prefer a choice-reaction strategy even in situations with severe spatiotemporal constraints to sufficiently accomplish a task 26,27 . A similar bias may exist in the selection of strategies when encountering asymmetric time constraints in the go-before-you-know task.…”

“…The time constraint is an effective experimental control variable for examining how asymmetry in potential targets is reflected in motor planning. Although this approach of experimentally manipulating time constraints is similar to that used by Wong & Haith (2017) 8 , who restricted the movement velocity, or that used by Hesse et al (2020) 26 , who manipulated the positioning of the target to manipulate the optimality of the averaging strategy, two reasons exist as to why manipulating time constraints may be effective for further understanding of behaviors. First, unlike constraints on movement speed, time constraints do not directly constrain the initial movement itself.…”

Age-related deficits in rapid visuomotor decision-making

“…3A). This resulted in more initial and final decision errors during interception, supporting recent evidence that decision-making is impaired when the movement required is more demanding to perform (Hesse et al, 2020; Reynaud et al, 2020). The dorsal and ventral streams are driven predominantly by magnocellular and parvocellular inputs, respectively, and axons of parvocellular cells have slower conduction velocity than magnocellular cells (Maunsell et al, 1999).…”

Procrastinação, Controle E Esforço Percebido No Comportamento De Desperdício De Alimentos

“…Ao observarem os indivíduos como Homo economicus, os pesquisadores (e.g. Hesse, Kangur, & Hunt, 2020;Zeelenberg & Dijk, 1997), que estudam as teorias econômicas do processo de decisão, defendem que o esforço percebido diminui ou neutraliza o valor da recompensa e, assim, pode causar aversão à tarefa. Como elucidam Amirudin e Gin ( 2019), no contexto de compras de supermercado, quanto maior o esforço percebido em termos de deslocamento e tempo empenhado, maiores as chances de buscar meios para evitar realizar as compras.…”