{"pk":50111,"title":"The dimensionality of individual differences in perceptual decision making","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Perceptual decision-making is the process of integrating perceptual evidence and prior experience to a decision. Yet even simple tasks show systematic deviations from optimality. To explore the suboptimalities and their latent structure, we analyzed behavioral data from 155 participants performing a Bernoulli clicks task, each completing 500 trials identifying the side with more clicks.  The data were fit with a customized neural-network incorporating temporal kernel weighting individual clicks, side bias, and win–stay/lose–shift effect. Weights on these suboptimalities exhibited substantial variabilities across participants but were captured by a concise structure: two dimensions represented temporal integration kernel, two dimensions reflected win–stay/lose–shift kernel, and one dimension corresponded to side bias. This compact five-dimensional structure and random noise explained the observed suboptimalities. Our results indicate seemingly complex individual differences can be decomposed into a small set of dissociable cognitive processes, providing insight into the structure underlying decision-making variability.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Decision making; Perception; Sensory Processing; Computational Modeling"}],"section":"Abstracts with Poster Presentation (accepted as Abstracts)","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1x87g1mw","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Jingming","middle_name":"","last_name":"Xue","name_suffix":"","institution":"Georgia Institute of Technology","department":""},{"first_name":"Robert","middle_name":"","last_name":"Wilson","name_suffix":"","institution":"Georgia Tech","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/50111/galley/38073/download/"}]}