Studies of Human Inference Using On-line Testing

The investigators will record behavioral responses from human participants on crowdsourcing platform Prolific to identify the decision strategies humans apply short-term, long-term, and multi timescale (across both timescales) inference tasks. Participants will perform a flexible decision-making task (described in Research Strategy Aim 1) in which subjects must determine which of two locations a series of evidence (package drops) came from. Subjects must 1) report the current location, 2) predict the next location. The investigators will record these responses, the number (and sequence) of evidence, and the response time (time from the end of trial until the response) for each trial. Subjects will perform all blocks (parameters and number of blocks to be determined by inference model development and testing prior to task development) so that we can compare responses at each timescale. Since participants participate voluntarily for small sums of money (around $12/ hour based on duration of task) and the investigators' previous studies have collected over 200 subjects in a matter of days, they will aim to record behavioral data from 1000 subjects. This number allows them to address the broad range of subject variability expected using Bayesian statistical methods such as Bayes factors.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Behavior
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: psychophysics

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 500
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Tahra Eissa; Phone Number: (303) 492-6974; Email: tahra.eissa@colorado.edu

Study Locations

• United States
  • Colorado
    • Boulder, Colorado, United States, 80309
      • Recruiting
      • University of Colorado Boulder
      • Contact: Tahra Eissa; Phone Number: 303-492-6974; Email: tahra.eissa@colorado.edu

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Adult Prolific participants who have a 95% approval rating and achieve a minimum score of 80% on our pre-test,
• Speak fluent English
• Are in the US.

Exclusion Criteria:

• None

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Basic Science
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Environmental Feature Experiment	Behavioral: psychophysics; Subjects will be shown two locations and a series of package drops that switch between the two locations with an unknown frequency. Subjects must identify which location is current in use and which location will be selected next. Subjects know that the frequency of the location changes is different in each block but not its exact value

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Binary Behavioral Decision Responses	Subject- provided choices (responses on the computer) between two presented options	Through task completion on each task trial, approximately 1-5x/ minute for approximate 30 minutes

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Colorado, Boulder
• Collaborators: University of Pennsylvania
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Tahra Eissa, University of Colorado, Denver

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): February 15, 2025
• Primary Completion (Estimated): August 1, 2026
• Study Completion (Estimated): June 30, 2028

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 19, 2023
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 28, 2023
• First Posted (Actual): May 8, 2023

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): May 18, 2026
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 14, 2026
• Last Verified: May 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Behavior; Diagnostic Techniques and Procedures; Diagnosis; Behavioral Disciplines and Activities; Behavioral Sciences; Psychophysics
• Other Study ID Numbers: 25-2034

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: The task structure will be preregistered to Open Science Framework (OSF) prior to data acquisition. De-identified data will be posted to OSF following publication.
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: The data will be made available following publication.
• IPD Sharing Access Criteria: IPD will be available on OSF to all who are interested.
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: STUDY_PROTOCOL; ANALYTIC_CODE

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No