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The cone method: Inferring decision times from single-trial 3D movement trajectories in choice behavior
Ongoing goal-directed movements can be rapidly adjusted following new environmental information, e.g., when chasing pray or foraging. This makes movement trajectories in go-before-you-know decision-making a suitable behavioral readout of the ongoing decision process. Yet, existing methods of movemen...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer US
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8613081/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33852130 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01579-5 |
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author | Ulbrich, Philipp Gail, Alexander |
author_facet | Ulbrich, Philipp Gail, Alexander |
author_sort | Ulbrich, Philipp |
collection | PubMed |
description | Ongoing goal-directed movements can be rapidly adjusted following new environmental information, e.g., when chasing pray or foraging. This makes movement trajectories in go-before-you-know decision-making a suitable behavioral readout of the ongoing decision process. Yet, existing methods of movement analysis are often based on statistically comparing two groups of trial-averaged trajectories and are not easily applied to three-dimensional data, preventing them from being applicable to natural free behavior. We developed and tested the cone method to estimate the point of overt commitment (POC) along a single two- or three-dimensional trajectory, i.e., the position where the movement is adjusted towards a newly selected spatial target. In Experiment 1, we established a “ground truth” data set in which the cone method successfully identified the experimentally constrained POCs across a wide range of all but the shallowest adjustment angles. In Experiment 2, we demonstrate the power of the method in a typical decision-making task with expected decision time differences known from previous findings. The POCs identified by cone method matched these expected effects. In both experiments, we compared the cone method’s single trial performance with a trial-averaging method and obtained comparable results. We discuss the advantages of the single-trajectory cone method over trial-averaging methods and possible applications beyond the examples presented in this study. The cone method provides a distinct addition to existing tools used to study decisions during ongoing movement behavior, which we consider particularly promising towards studies of non-repetitive free behavior. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13428-021-01579-5. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8613081 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86130812021-12-10 The cone method: Inferring decision times from single-trial 3D movement trajectories in choice behavior Ulbrich, Philipp Gail, Alexander Behav Res Methods Article Ongoing goal-directed movements can be rapidly adjusted following new environmental information, e.g., when chasing pray or foraging. This makes movement trajectories in go-before-you-know decision-making a suitable behavioral readout of the ongoing decision process. Yet, existing methods of movement analysis are often based on statistically comparing two groups of trial-averaged trajectories and are not easily applied to three-dimensional data, preventing them from being applicable to natural free behavior. We developed and tested the cone method to estimate the point of overt commitment (POC) along a single two- or three-dimensional trajectory, i.e., the position where the movement is adjusted towards a newly selected spatial target. In Experiment 1, we established a “ground truth” data set in which the cone method successfully identified the experimentally constrained POCs across a wide range of all but the shallowest adjustment angles. In Experiment 2, we demonstrate the power of the method in a typical decision-making task with expected decision time differences known from previous findings. The POCs identified by cone method matched these expected effects. In both experiments, we compared the cone method’s single trial performance with a trial-averaging method and obtained comparable results. We discuss the advantages of the single-trajectory cone method over trial-averaging methods and possible applications beyond the examples presented in this study. The cone method provides a distinct addition to existing tools used to study decisions during ongoing movement behavior, which we consider particularly promising towards studies of non-repetitive free behavior. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13428-021-01579-5. Springer US 2021-04-14 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8613081/ /pubmed/33852130 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01579-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Ulbrich, Philipp Gail, Alexander The cone method: Inferring decision times from single-trial 3D movement trajectories in choice behavior |
title | The cone method: Inferring decision times from single-trial 3D movement trajectories in choice behavior |
title_full | The cone method: Inferring decision times from single-trial 3D movement trajectories in choice behavior |
title_fullStr | The cone method: Inferring decision times from single-trial 3D movement trajectories in choice behavior |
title_full_unstemmed | The cone method: Inferring decision times from single-trial 3D movement trajectories in choice behavior |
title_short | The cone method: Inferring decision times from single-trial 3D movement trajectories in choice behavior |
title_sort | cone method: inferring decision times from single-trial 3d movement trajectories in choice behavior |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8613081/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33852130 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01579-5 |
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