In cognitive experiments, participants are often instructed to respond as fast and as accurately as possible. As these are two conflicting goals, there is an individual choice of interpretation regarding a speed-accuracy trade-off, which can hinder the interpretation of isolated reaction time and accuracy scores, especially when they are suspected to be caused by different underlying mechanisms. Different calculations are employed to derive single measures from the combination of speed and accuracy. Although there exists theoretical foundation for some of these measures in the form of drift diffusion models, neither do the models perfectly map the true decision-making process nor do the combined measures perfectly capture all aspects of the models.
The idea to be presented here is to employ a single target score. This is known to participants, thus mitigating the conflict between two goals. The target score will be a sum of positive points for correct answers and negative points for incorrect answers and the goal will be to acquire as many points as possible in a given time frame. By changing how the points are distributed, participants should focus on either speed or accuracy. However, the single score introduces increased complexity by requiring participants to optimize their individual speed-accuracy trade-off according to the score. The goal is to investigate whether participants are able to adapt their speed and accuracy to optimize the scores thereby allowing the analysis of a single target measure.