Reaction time refers to the time between the ________ of a stimulus and a persons response to it
IntroductionIn cognitive experimental psychology, we distinguish between simple and choice response time tasks. These two terms are being used in many books papers about cognitive psychology. This lesson explains and demonstrates what we mean with simple and choice response time tasks. Show
People (and animals) can respond a lot faster when there is just one stimulus and one response type (Simple Response Time task). Also, the more stimuli and responses there are, the slower you get (this is known as Hick’s law).
It is now well established that a person’s response speed is influenced by age and general intelligence (e.g., Deary, Liewald, and Nissan, 2011). It is important to note that many other factors play a role as well, for example the conditions under which you perform the task (are you fit or tired, are you hungry, etc). Also, your speed depends on how accurate you aim to be. If you do not want to make mistakes, you will become slower. This is known as the speed-accuracy trade off (this goes back to the work of Woodworth, 1899; for a good review see Heitz, 2014). It is important to understand that response times play a crucial role in experimental cognitive psychology. The basic idea is that response times reflect the time it takes to interpret a stimulus, get information from memory, initiate a muscle response, etc. Thus, response times can be used to find out how long basic thought processes take. This idea goes back to the work of the early experiment psychologists in the second half of the 19th century (when the term "cognitive psychology" did not even exist). One of the leading figures in this area of research was the Dutch ophthalmologist Franciscus Donders. In picturesBelow you see an example of the simple and the choice response time paradigm. In the simple reaction time task, you need to wait until you see a black cross on the white square. When that happens, you press as soon as you can the space bar. Thus, there is one stimulus (black cross) and one response (pressing the space bar). In the choice reaction time task, you need to wait until you see a black cross on one of the four white squares (e.g., there are four different black cross position, which counts as four different stimuli). When that happens, you press as soon as you can the corresponding key (z, x, . or ,). Thus, there are four stimulus-response associations. In this example trial, you need to press the "x" key. Do it yourselfIn the demonstration below, you will do both a simple response time task (20 trials) and a choice response time task (20 trials). At the end, you will see your average response speed for the simple and choice reaction time task. You will be slower in the choice reaction time task. Here we use the Deary-Liewald paradigm, which uses both a simple and a 4-choice response time task. There are two differences:
If you want to do the full version of the Deary-Liewald paradigm, visit the experiment library.
References
What reaction time is a stimulus response?The average reaction time for humans is 0.25 seconds to a visual stimulus, 0.17 for an audio stimulus, and 0.15 seconds for a touch stimulus.
What is the reaction time?Reaction time (RT) is a measure of the quickness with which an organism responds to some sort of stimulus. RT is defined as the interval of time between the presentation of the stimulus and appearance of appropriate voluntary response in the subject.
What is reaction time in psychology?There is certain time period between application of external stimulus and appropriate motor response to the stimulus called the reaction time. Reaction time is defined as interval of time between presentation of stimulus and appearance of appropriate voluntary response in a subject [1, 2].
What determines reaction time?Many factors have been shown to affect reaction times, including age, gender, physical fitness, fatigue, distraction, alcohol, personality type, and whether the stimulus is auditory or visual.
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