Does precrastination explain why some observers are suboptimal in a visual search task?

How do we decide where to search for a target? Optimal search relies on first considering the relative informational value of different locations and then executing eye movements to the best options. However, many participants consistently move their eyes to locations that can be easily ascertained to neither contain the target nor provide new information about the target's location. Here, we asked whether this suboptimal search behaviour represents a specific example of a general tendency towards precrastination: starting sub-goals of a task before they are needed, and in so doing, spending longer time on doing the task than is necessary. To test this hypothesis, we asked 200 participants to do two tasks: retrieve two heavy buckets (one close and one far) and search for a line segment. Precrastination is defined as consistently picking up the closer bucket first, versus the more efficient strategy of picking up the farther bucket first. Search efficiency is the proportion of fixations directed to more cluttered regions of the search array. Based on the pilot data, we predicted an association of precrastination with inefficient search strategies. Personality inventories were also administered to identify stable characteristics associated with these strategies. In the final dataset, there was no clear association between search strategy and precrastination, nor did these correlate strongly with any of the personality measures collected. This article received in-principle acceptance (IPA) at Royal Society Open Science on 29 January 2020. The accepted Stage 1 version of the manuscript, not including results and discussion, may be found at https://osf.io/p2sjx. This preregistration was performed prior to data collection and analysis.

Deciding what to do: Observations from a psycho-motor laboratory, including the discovery of pre-crastination.

A great deal of research has concerned choices of goods or services with different values receivable at various times. Temporal discounting - the magnification of values that can be obtained sooner rather than later - has proven to be immensely important in this regard. In the present article, we shift the focus from the receipt of goods or services to the performance of tasks. We show that temporal discounting also applies to task choices. Pre-crastination, the phenomenon we point to, was discovered by Rosenbaum, Gong, and Potts (2014) and is the tendency to hasten tasks even at the expense of extra energy. Pre-crastination was discovered in a study of psycho-motor performance, where the focus was on biomechanical factors affecting task choices. In the present article, we review that research, showing how the tendency found in the initial experiments are in fact illustrative of a more general motor-control tendency to inhibit easy forms of movement for the sake of later performance goals. Such inhibitory control may also be the basis for pre-crastination, provided one assumes that pre-crastination keeps working memory as clear as possible. A wide range of behavioral choices fit under the rubric of pre-crastination, such as answering emails too soon, submitting articles before they are ready, judging others before they should be judged, convicting others to get cases over with, and, in the worst case, going to war prematurely. Lack of temperance in these choices may seem to arise from impulsivity, but we argue against that view. The desire to "clear the decks" to be prepared for new challenges is, we suggest, a more apt account of pre-crastination.

End-state comfort meets pre-crastination.

Research on motor planning has revealed two seemingly contradictory phenomena. One is the end-state comfort effect, the tendency to grasp objects in physically awkward ways for the sake of comfortable or easy-to-control final postures (Rosenbaum et al., Attention and Performance XIII: Motor representation and control, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey, 1990). The other is pre-crastination, the tendency to hasten the completion of tasks even at the expense of extra physical effort (Rosenbaum et al., Psychol Sci 25:1487-1496, 2014). End-state comfort seems to reflect emphasis on final states, whereas pre-crastination seems to reflect emphasis on initial states. How can both effects exist? We sought to resolve this seeming conflict by noting, first, that the effects have been tested in different contexts. End-state comfort has been tested with grasping, whereas pre-crastination has been tested with walking plus grasping. Second, both effects may reflect planning that aids aiming, as already demonstrated for end-state comfort but not yet tested for pre-crastination. We tested the two effects in a single walk-and-grasp task and found that demands on aiming influenced both effects, although precrastination was not fully influenced by changes in the demands of aiming. We conclude that end-state comfort and precrastination are both aiming-related, but that precrastination also reflects a desire to hasten early task completion.

Associations between informant ratings of personality disorder traits, self-reports of personality, and directly observed behavior.

OBJECTIVE: Diagnoses of personality disorders (PD) must rely on judgments of observers-either clinicians or acquaintances-because personality disorders are primarily defined in terms of maladaptive interpersonal behavior. Little is known, however, about how closely acquaintances' judgments of PD traits relate to self-reports of theoretically relevant Big Five traits or directly observed behavioral outcomes in interpersonal situations. The present study examines associations between judgments of the 10 PD traits provided by close acquaintances, self-reports of PD-relevant Big Five personality traits, and observed interpersonal behaviors across three different three-person laboratory interactions (i.e., unstructured chat, cooperative task, competitive game). METHOD: The sample consisted of 256 undergraduate students (130 females; Mage = 19.83, SD = 1.25). Four unacquainted observers independently rated participants' behaviors from video recordings. RESULTS: In line with previous work, informant reports of PD traits demonstrate strong convergent validity with relevant self-reported Big Five traits (as identified by Lynam & Widiger, 2001). Directly observed behavior is meaningfully associated with acquaintances' judgments and self-reports of PD-relevant traits, and the associations between these judgments and behavior are strongest for traits associated with histrionic and schizoid PD. Vector correlations between behavioral profiles associated with informant and self-reports show that both assessments have similar behavioral correlates. Associations between PD trait ratings and behavior appeared to differ as a function of gender, with males showing more and stronger correlations. CONCLUSIONS: Informants' ratings of PD traits are impressively accurate, converging both with self-reports of relevant traits and directly observed interpersonal behavior. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of PDs and associated traits can be augmented by information from multiple acquaintances who have the opportunity to observe how an individual interacts with others on a daily basis across diverse contexts.

From Elementary School to Midlife: Childhood Personality Predicts Behavior During Cognitive Testing over Four Decades Later.

The current study uses a prospective, longitudinal design and lifespan perspective to understand how child personality relates to directly observed adult behavior during cognitive testing. Teacher assessments of child Big Five personality in elementary school were correlated with directly observed behaviors during a videotaped cognitive test four decades later. Past work suggested Openness and Conscientiousness may relate to task-relevant academic behaviors. Childhood Openness was associated with several behaviors, even after controlling for participant's cognitive performance. Childhood Conscientiousness was also related to behavior, but not as expected. Other Big Five ratings were not reliably related to behavior. The study examined personality stability in a unique way and suggests a further examination of how Openness in children manifests in later behavior.