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In perceptual decision-making tasks, participants are usually assumed to apply only a single cognitive strategy throughout the course of a task. Variability in observed behavior (eg, reaction times) is explained as the result of variability in the same cognitive process that gave rise to the observed behavior. For example, in most theories of perceptual decision-making, it is assumed that variability in reaction times is the result of the variability in the amount of information the stimulus provides, the efficiency of information processing, the amount of response caution, and the speed of the motor response (Gold and Shadlen, 2007; Brown and Heathcote, 2008; Ratcliff and McKoon, 2008; Forstmann et al., 2015).

Such theories assume that during every trial of a perceptual decision-making task, stimulus information is processed and used to guide a choice. This assumption could be challenged by hypothesizing that, on a …