EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Module 6
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES
OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Introduction:

Reaction time is typically measured in terms of the time elapsing between the presentation of a
stimulus, which is often a brief visual or auditory signal, and a discrete response such as the press
or release of a response key, the initiation of a movement, or the emission of a vocal response.

In this chapter, we examine two basic cognitive processes: attention and the time taken to respond
to stimuli. We focus on the aspects of attention concerning how people switch their cognitive
resources from one task to another.

Key terms with meaning:

Choice Reaction Time – The time between the presentation of one of several stimuli and the
occurrence of one of several responses. It is termed choice reaction time because a discrimination
has to be made between two or more stimuli and a different response made depending on which
stimulus was presented.

Cognition – Mental or intellectual abilities, typically assessed with special psychometric or

experimental tests.

Neurological Status – The level of one’s health with respect to the central nervous system.

Perceptual Speed – A cognitive ability usually assessed with simple paper-and-pencil tasks
requiring search or discrimination tasks.

Slowing – The decrease in speed in many reaction time and perceptual speed tasks associated with
increased age.

Speed – The rate at which an individual can carry out many processes. Typically assessed with
choice reaction time and perceptual speed tasks.

THE ABC OF REACTION TIME

Bit of History

Interest in reaction time began in the eighteenth century, when an assistant at the Royal Observatory
in England was fi red because his reaction times did not agree with his employer’s reaction times.
Astronomers in those days recorded the time and position of astral events by observing when a
celestial body crossed a line in the eyepiece of their telescope. A nearby clock ticked every second,
 and the observer was expected to note the crossing time to the nearest tenth of a second. When the
crossing times of Kinnebrook, the unfortunate assistant, were checked by his boss, they were always
too great. Kinnebrook was warned but could not shorten his observation times, so he was fired. A
German astronomer, Bessel, heard of Kinnebrook’s firing and wondered whether the difference
between the crossing times of Kinnebrook and his boss was caused by something other than
incompetence. Bessel suspected that people might observe the crossing with slightly different
reaction times. When Bessel and other astronomers compared their crossing times, they consistently
found systematic differences. Some astronomers always made faster estimates than others. This
difference among astronomers in reacting to the crossing times of celestial bodies was called the
personal equation, a name that highlights the fact that people differ in their reaction times and,
thus, have their own equation for estimating crossing times. The personal equation remained only a
problem for astronomers until Donders, a Dutch physiologist, realized that he could use people’s
reaction times to calibrate the time required for various mental operations. Donders developed three
kinds of reaction-time tasks that are still known as Donders A, B, and C reactions.

In the A reaction, which is often called the simple reaction, a single stimulus, say, a light, comes
on, and the observer responds by quickly pressing a key or button. There is only one stimulus and
one response. When you turn off your alarm clock in response to its loud signal, the time between
the onset of the sound and your depression of the alarm button is your simple reaction time.
Donders believed that the A, or simple, reaction provided a baseline of the cognitive operations
involved in more complicated reactions. In a B reaction, which is also known as choice reaction
time, there is more than one stimulus and more than one response. Each stimulus has its own
unique response.

Stimulus 1 Reaction 1 Donders A

Stimulus 1 Reaction 1 Donders B
Stimulus 2 Reaction 2
Stimulus 1 Reaction 1 Donders C
Stimulus 2
Figure 1. At the top is the Donders A reaction task. In this simple reaction-time procedure, one stimulus
is linked to one response. In the middle is the Donders B reaction task. In this reaction time procedure, two
stimuli are linked to two responses. At the bottom is the Donders C reaction task, in which there are two
stimuli but only one is linked to a response.

The ability to dynamically shift your focus of attention from one aspect of a stimulus to a
different aspect is termed cognitive control and is a mainstream topic in the study of attention that
has been of interest to psychologists for many years. Imagine an experiment where you must
respond as fast as possible to one of four stimuli: a red square, a red circle, a blue square, and a
blue circle. If you have no advance information before the stimuli are presented, this is a four-
choice Donders B reaction-time task. But if you had partial advance information that limited the
set of possible alternatives to only two stimuli—for example, if you knew in advance that a square
would be presented—your reaction time will be faster than a four-choice RT. If the time between
the cue that presents partial advance information and the stimulus is sufficiently long, RT to the
cued stimulus will equal two-choice RT (e.g., Kantowitz & Sanders, 1972). The time between the
cue and the stimulus is called the cue-stimulus interval; it is often in the range of 100 to 1000 ms.

Psychological refractory period

In a common dual-task procedure, subjects perform two different choice-reaction tasks, Task 1
(T1) and Task 2 (T2), on a single trial. An interval between S1 and S2 is called stimulus onset
asynchrony (SOA) between the stimuli for T1 (S1) and T2 (S2) is varied. The typical finding is
that RT for the second task (RT2) is slowed as the SOA decreases. Telford (1931) called this
phenomenon the psychological refractory period (PRP) effect, a period in which additional
cognitive activities are difficult to manage.

Stress and Cognitive Control. It is interesting to wonder how stress might affect cognitive
control. There are two major possibilities. First, handling stress could require capacity or attention,
thereby decreasing performance because resources devoted to stress are no longer available for
processing stimuli (Broadbent, 1971). Second, people might adapt to depleted resources by
selecting a more efficient processing strategy for dealing with perceptual stimuli so that increased
selectivity improves performance (Steinhauser, Maier, & Hubner, 2007).

To answer this question, does stress improve cognitive control, Steinhauser and associates (2007),
performed a straightforward experiment. They created two levels of stress, High and Low, by
presenting multiple-choice questions that were easy or difficult: Indeed, some of the high-stress
questions were insoluble. After this IQ test was completed, they presented stimuli consisting of a
digit and a letter (e.g., 6M). Cues specified that subjects should respond to the digit or to the letter.
For the letter task, subjects had to decide if the letter was a consonant or a vowel. For the digit
task, subjects had to decide if the digit was odd or even. Subjects responded by pressing one of
two buttons and RT was recorded. The cue-stimulus interval was either Short (200 msec) or Long
(1000 msec). Blocks of Short and Long cue-stimulus intervals alternated, and the starting block
was counterbalanced across subjects. On successive trials within a 48-trial block, tasks could either
be Repeated (e.g., digit followed by digit) or Shifted (e.g., digit followed by letter).

In other words, the difference between the two RTs for the Short interval was greater than the
difference for the Long interval when stress was Low. But under High stress the cost of shifting
tasks was the same for Short and Long cue-stimulus intervals. This outcome is consistent with the
second prediction given at the start of this section: Introducing stress causes a change in cognitive
strategy.
CHANGES IN ACTION SELECTION WITH PRACTICE

Choice RT decreases with practice at a task, with equivalent amounts of practice producing larger
changes earlier in practice than later. Teichner and Krebs (1974) reviewed numerous studies of
visual choice reactions and concluded that the stage of processing that benefits most from practice
is response selection. Newell and Rosenbloom (1981) proposed that the changes in RT with
practice follow a power function:

RT = BN

where N is the number of practice trials, B is RT on the first trial, and is the learning rate. The
power function has come to be regarded as a law to which any model that is intended to explain
practice effects must conform. Proctor and Dutta (1993) had subjects perform two-choice tasks for
10 blocks of 42 trials each. In the critical conditions, they performed with the hands uncrossed and
crossed in alternate blocks. Whether compatible or incompatible, when the spatial mapping of left-
right stimulus locations to left-right response locations remained constant, there was no cost
associated with alternating the hand placements: Overall RT and changes with practice with the
alternating placements were comparable to those of subjects who practiced with the same hand
placement for all blocks. In contrast, when the mapping of stimulus to response locations was
switched between blocks so that the same hand was used to respond to a stimulus when the hands
were crossed or uncrossed, there was a substantial cost for participants who alternated hand
placements compared to those who did not. These results imply that the S-R associations that are
strengthened through practice involve spatial response codes. Practice with an incompatible spatial
mapping alters the influence of stimulus location on performance when location becomes
irrelevant to the task.

SUMMING UP

Choice Reaction Time (RT) or as also called Action selection is an important part of behavior
inside and outside of the laboratory because choices among alternative actions are required in
virtually all situations. Action selection has been a topic of interest in human experimental
psychology since Donders’s (1868/1969) seminal work, with contemporary research on the topic
being at the forefront of the cognitive revolution in the 1950s. S-R compatibility, which is the
quintessential action-selection topic, saw a surge in research in the 1990s, with significant
advances made in the development of theoretical frameworks for explaining a variety of
phenomena in terms of common mechanisms. As we move into the twenty-first century, the range
of tasks and environments in which compatibility effects play a significant role, and the significant
insights these effects provide regarding human performance, is only now coming to be fully
appreciated.

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