The Psychology and Psychobiology of Simple Decisions: Speeded Choice and Its Neural Correlates

Abstract

In this chapter, we provide a tutorial review of the class of sequential sampling models of two-choice decision-making. These models, which have been developed in cognitive and mathematical psychology over the last 50 years, provide a detailed quantitative account of performance in simple, speeded choice tasks. The models explain the major findings from a wide variety of behavioral decision tasks, including the relationship between choice probabilities and response time (RT), the speed-accuracy tradeoff, the shapes of RT distributions, and the relative speed of correct and error responses. More recently, electrophysiological recordings from decision-related brain areas in awake behaving monk..