title: Temporal trade-offs in psychophysics.
abstract: Psychophysical techniques typically assume straightforward relationships between manipulations of real-world events, their effects on the brain, and behavioral reports of those effects. However, these relationships can be influenced by many complex, strategic factors that contribute to task performance. Here we discuss several of these factors that share two key features. First, they involve subjects making flexible use of time to process information. Second, this flexibility can reflect the rational regulation of information-processing trade-offs that can play prominent roles in particular temporal epochs: sensitivity to stability versus change for past information, speed versus accuracy for current information, and exploitation versus exploration for future goals. Understanding how subjects manage these trade-offs can be used to help design and interpret psychophysical studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States; Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States; The Center for Science and Society and Departments of Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Economics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, United States.
authors.forename: David L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Barack
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States. Electronic address: jigold@mail.med.upenn.edu.
authors.forename: Joshua I
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Gold
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D011601:Psychophysics; D013997:Time Factors