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Poster B14 in Poster Session B - Thursday, August 8, 2024, 1:30 – 3:30 pm, Johnson Ice Rink
The Perils of Omitting Omissions when Modeling Evidence Accumulation
Xiamin Leng1, Alexander Fengler1, Amitai Shenhav1, Michael Frank1; 1Brown University
Choice deadlines are commonly imposed in decision-making research to incentivize speedy responses and sustained attention. However, computational models of choice and response times routinely overlook this deadline, instead simply omitting trials past the deadline from further analysis. This choice is made under the implicit assumption that parameter estimation is not significantly affected by ignoring these omissions. Using new tools from likelihood-free inference, here we elucidate the degree to which omitting omissions, even in seemingly benign settings, can lead researchers astray. Using a Sequential Sampling Model (SSM) with collapsing boundaries as a test-bed, we explore this phenomenon and show how it can be remedied by modeling omissions expected from the generative process.