Age-related differences in diffusion model boundary optimality with both trial-limited and time-limited tasks

In two-choice decision tasks, Starns and Ratcliff (Psychology and Aging 25: 377–390, 2010) showed that older adults are farther from the optimal speed–accuracy trade-off than young adults. They suggested that the age effect resulted from differences in task goals, with young participants focused on balancing speed and accuracy and older participants focused on minimizing errors. We compared speed–accuracy criteria with a standard procedure (blocks that had a fixed numbers of trials) to a condition in which blocks lasted a fixed amount of time and participants were instructed to get as many correct responses as possible within the time limit—a goal that explicitly required balancing speed and accuracy. Fits of the diffusion model showed that criteria differences persisted in the fixed-time condition, suggesting that age differences are not solely based on differences in task goals. Also, both groups produced more conservative criteria in difficult conditions when it would have been optimal to be more liberal.

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