Speed accuracy tradeoff? Not so fast: Marginal changes in speed have inconsistent relationships with accuracy in real-world settings

Abstract

The speed-accuracy tradeoff suggests that responses generated under time constraints will be less accurate. While it has undergone extensive experimental verification, it is less clear whether it applies in settings where time pressures are not being experimentally manipulated (but where respondents still vary in their utilization of time). Using a large corpus of 29 response time datasets containing data from cognitive tasks without experimental manipulation of time pressure, we probe whether the speed-accuracy tradeoff holds across a variety of tasks using idiosyncratic within-person variation in speed. We find inconsistent relationships between marginal increases in time spent responding and accuracy; in many cases, marginal increases in time do not predict increases in accuracy. However, we do observe time pressures (in the form of time limits) to consistently reduce accuracy and for rapid responses to typically show the anticipated relationship (i.e., they are more accurate if they are slower). We also consider analysis of items and individuals. We find substantial variation in the item-level associations between speed and accuracy. On the person side, respondents who exhibit more within-person variation in response speed are typically of lower ability. Finally, we consider the predictive power of a person's response time in predicting out-of-sample responses; it is generally a weak predictor. Collectively, our findings suggest the speed-accuracy tradeoff may be limited as a conceptual model in its application in non-experimental settings and, more generally, offer empirical results and an analytic approach that will be useful as more response time data is collected.