Individual optimization of risky decisions in duration and distance estimations

Abstract

Many everyday decisions require an accurate perception of how much time has passed since a previous event. Although humans estimate time intervals with a high degree of mean accuracy, the precision of estimations varies greatly between individuals. In situations in which accurate timing is rewarded but responding too early is punished, the optimal amount of risk is directly dependent on the precision of the timer. Previously, it was found that humans and rodents displayed near-optimal adjustment of their mean response time based on their individual precision and the level of punishment. It is as of yet unknown whether these strategies of optimality in interval timing are specific to the timing domain, or instead reflect an ability that generalizes to other sensorimotor modalities of decision making. Here, we address this by combining a temporal reproduction experiment and a distance estimation experiment with an identical reward scheme. We found that participants approached optimality in both tasks, but generally underadjusted their responses in the face of high risk. As this individual adjustment was consistent over modalities, these results can best be explained by assuming that the adjustment of behavior towards optimal performance is driven by a modality independent mechanism.