14 DAY TRIAL // According to the conclusions of a new scientific study, delaying the onset of decision-making processes by a mere fraction of a second can increase their accuracy considerably. Researchers at the Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have recently published their discovery, in the March 5 online issue of the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE.
The work also carries significant implications for our understanding of neuropsychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These disorders are characterized by mild to severe abnormalities in cognitive function. Additionally, this conclusion could be used to improve decision-making processes for people working with complex situations.
While decision-making remains an innate mechanism, it is not always so easy to make the right call. In many cases, people err even when it comes to the most basic tasks. This is particularly true in situations where more than one source of information is vying for our attention. What the new study brings is a silver lining, showing that a newly-identified mechanism can be used to improve decision accuracy.
The most important aspect of this mechanism is to do nothing at first, says first study author Tobias Teicher, PhD, who now holds an appointment as an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. He carried out the research while a neurosciences postdoctoral researcher at CUMC.
“Postponing the onset of the decision process by as little as 50 to 100 milliseconds enables the brain to focus attention on the most relevant information and block out irrelevant distractors,” says expert Jack Grinband, PhD, the last author of the study.
“This way, rather than working longer or harder at making the decision, the brain simply postpones the decision onset to a more beneficial point in time,” adds Grinband, who holds joint appointments as an associate research scientist and as an assistant professor of clinical radiology at the Taub Institute.
The key to understanding the newly-discovered mechanism is to think of the brain as integrating a large number of sensory information that potentially contradict each other in the decision-making process.
“Imagine that you’re coming up to a traffic light—the target—and need to decide whether the light is red or green. There is typically little ambiguity, and you make the correct decision quickly, in a matter of tens of milliseconds,” Teichert says. The problem is that brain does not make any difference between relevant and irrelevant information, so distractors can get in the way of making the right call.
Basically, errors occur whenever the brain starts taking a decision before it finishes processing and weeding out irrelevant information, or distractors. Fixing this is simply a matter of employing a trick called the speed-accuracy trade-off, where you take longer to make a decision, but end up making a better one.
“This might be the first scientific study to justify procrastination. On a more serious note, our study provides important insights into fundamental brain processes and […] could lead to new training strategies to improve decision making in complex high-stakes environments, such as air traffic control towers and military combat,” Teichert concludes.