Beyond Reaction Time and Error Rate: Monitoring Mental Processes by Means of Slow Event-Related Brain Potentials

1993 ◽  
pp. 105-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Rösler
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Brain Potentials

How Useful is the Power Law of Practice for Recognizing Practice in Concentration Tests?

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Hagemeister
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Power Law ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Practice Effect ◽  
Practice Effects ◽  
Rate Decrease ◽  
Small Practice

Abstract. When concentration tests are completed repeatedly, reaction time and error rate decrease considerably, but the underlying ability does not improve. In order to overcome this validity problem this study aimed to test if the practice effect between tests and within tests can be useful in determining whether persons have already completed this test. The power law of practice postulates that practice effects are greater in unpracticed than in practiced persons. Two experiments were carried out in which the participants completed the same tests at the beginning and at the end of two test sessions set about 3 days apart. In both experiments, the logistic regression could indeed classify persons according to previous practice through the practice effect between the tests at the beginning and at the end of the session, and, less well but still significantly, through the practice effect within the first test of the session. Further analyses showed that the practice effects correlated more highly with the initial performance than was to be expected for mathematical reasons; typically persons with long reaction times have larger practice effects. Thus, small practice effects alone do not allow one to conclude that a person has worked on the test before.

A Continuous-Flow Model for Phonatory Reaction Time

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Ferrand ◽  
Gordon W. Blood ◽  
Harvey R. Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Continuous Flow ◽  
Vocal Fold ◽  
Flow Model ◽  
Reaction Time Task ◽  
Central Process ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Time Task ◽  
Vocal Fold Vibration ◽  
Yield Information

The purpose of this study was to validate a proposed continuous-flow model of phonatory reaction time by investigating the temporal order of selected laryngeal and neurophysiological events involved in a phonatory reaction time task. Ten normal speakers participated in a phonatory reaction time task. Laryngeal positioning movements prior to vocal fold closure (laryngeal shift) and onset of vocal fold vibration (acoustic onset) were recorded with an electroglottograph. P300 brain potentials were collected simultaneously, and they served as an index of a central process underlying reaction time. The obtained temporal ordering of laryngeal shift, P300, and acoustic onset supported a continuous-flow model of phonatory reaction time. Use of this model might yield information that is more accurate in explaining physiological function and more precise in describing temporal patterning than the serial model.

The Development and Evaluation of Pictographic Symbols

1981 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 198-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Sloan ◽  
Paul Eshelman
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Relative Effectiveness ◽  
Symbol Recognition ◽  
Black Cross ◽  
Negation Sign

The premise adopted in this study is that representatives of the audience for whom a symbol is intended should be participants in its evolution as well as subjects in its evaluation. Several situations in need of product misuse warnings were supplied by a manufacturer of ovenware products. Symbol design possibilities were first generated for each message category and then design input was obtained from a sample of potential product users. New design candidates were developed on the basis of subject recommendations. Study generated symbols proved to be significantly more effective than designs used by the manufacturer for the same message categories as assessed by differences in reaction time and error rate. The relative effectiveness of different negation sign designs was also evaluated. Differences in both reaction time and subjective ranks of communicativeness suggest that a thin black cross is more effective in conveying negation than a thin black slash, a partial slash or cross, and a contour slash or cross. Significant differences were not found in the extent that the designs interfere with symbol recognition.

Influence of Musical Expertise on Segmental and Tonal Processing in Mandarin Chinese

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 2701-2715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Céline Marie ◽  
Franco Delogu ◽  
Giulia Lampis ◽  
Marta Olivetti Belardinelli ◽  
Mireille Besson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Perceptual Processing ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Transfer Effects ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Musical Expertise ◽  
Tonal Processing

A same–different task was used to test the hypothesis that musical expertise improves the discrimination of tonal and segmental (consonant, vowel) variations in a tone language, Mandarin Chinese. Two four-word sequences (prime and target) were presented to French musicians and nonmusicians unfamiliar with Mandarin, and event-related brain potentials were recorded. Musicians detected both tonal and segmental variations more accurately than nonmusicians. Moreover, tonal variations were associated with higher error rate than segmental variations and elicited an increased N2/N3 component that developed 100 msec earlier in musicians than in nonmusicians. Finally, musicians also showed enhanced P3b components to both tonal and segmental variations. These results clearly show that musical expertise influenced the perceptual processing as well as the categorization of linguistic contrasts in a foreign language. They show positive music-to-language transfer effects and open new perspectives for the learning of tone languages.

Contributions to the History of Psychology: XXXIX. T. V. Moore and His Cognitive Psychology of 1939

1985 ◽  
Vol 57 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1311-1316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry J. Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
History Of Psychology ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Work Interaction

In 1939 Thomas Verner Moore authored a book entitled Cognitive Psychology which shared many commonalities with the psychological perspective that emerged under the same name 25 years later. Moore rejected the behaviorism of his day, took knowing as the fundamental problem of psychology, employed reaction time procedures to differentiate among mental processes, and was committed to representationalism as an epistemology. His career, early experimental work, interaction with E. C. Tolman, and textbook are discussed.

Switching of Response Modalities

2005 ◽  
Vol 58 (7) ◽  
pp. 1325-1338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea M. Philipp ◽  
Iring Koch
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Task Switching ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Task Switch ◽  
Different Response

When participants perform a sequence of different tasks, it is assumed that the engagement in one task leads to the inhibition of the previous task. This inhibition persists and impairs performance when participants switch back to this (still inhibited) task after only one intermediate trial. Previous task-switching studies on this issue have defined different tasks at the level of stimulus categorization. In our experiments we used different response modalities to define tasks. Participants always used the same stimulus categorization (e.g., categorize a digit as odd vs. even), but had to give a vocal, finger, or foot response (A, B, or C). Our results showed a higher reaction time and error rate in ABA sequences than in CBA sequences, indicating n − 2 repetition cost as a marker for persisting task inhibition. We assume that different response modalities can define a task and are inhibited in a “task switch” in the same way as stimulus categories are inhibited.

Hebrew plural inflection

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vered Vaknin-Nussbaum ◽  
Joseph Shimron
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Morphological Analysis ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
Additional Source ◽  
Main Obstacle ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Nominal Inflection

Research on several Indo-European languages attests to notable difficulties in inflecting irregular nouns and verbs. In these languages morphological and phonological factors are often intertwined in a way that obscures the source of the problem. Hebrew by contrast allows isolation of morphological and phonological factors in nominal inflection. Three experiments demonstrated that as in Indo-European languages, nominal inflection of Hebrew irregular nouns is slower than that of regular nouns and involves more errors. The occurrence of phonological alterations to the noun’s stem with the inflection is an additional source of irregularity, which also taxes the inflectional process in reaction time and error rate. The empirical results underline the power of the default automatic suffixation process as the main obstacle to irregular inflection. A theoretical contribution of this study is an interpretation of the irregularity effect based on a morphological analysis that views Hebrew as having a linear rather than a non-linear morphology. The stem–suffix match is suggested as the dominant factor affecting the inflectional process, responsible for the difficulties in irregular inflections. It is argued that in Hebrew, the differences between inflecting regular and irregular nouns can be easily and adequately explained as resulting from a mismatch between a stem and an affix.

From Simple to Complex or Vice Versa: Sequence Effects on the Detection of Embedded Figures

Perception ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 247-247
Author(s):  
I Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Random Order ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Presentation Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Embedded Figures ◽  
Sequence Effects ◽  
Mean Reaction Time

In a series of studies concerning part - whole perception we have investigated effects of perceptual learning, and of systematically varied presentation orders on the detection of embedded figures. In the present study the effects of increasing and decreasing complexity orders on detection performance are reported. Stimuli were 170 pairs of whole and part figures. Half of them were positive items, ie the searched part was contained in the (simultaneously presented) whole. The other half were negative items, ie the searched part was not contained in the whole. The difficulty of all figure pairs was determined from earlier data. On the basis of these difficulty parameters three presentation orders were created: (1) increasing difficulty (from simple to complex), (2) decreasing difficulty (from complex to simple), and (3) randomised order. Sixty subjects performed each of these tasks in three sessions separated by one week. Effects of practice and samples were balanced by permutating the order of the three tasks. The reaction times and error rates for all presentations were registered. The results showed marked differences between the three tasks: The lowest mean reaction time was obtained in the presentation order with increasing difficulty. Error rate, on the other hand, was lowest in the decreasing-difficulty presentation order. For the random-order presentation error rate and reaction time was in between the other orders. Furthermore, differences in benefit from practice were observed between the three orders of difficulty. Results are discussed with respect to the question of how efficient search strategies may be learned and whether one can learn to bend the rules of Gestalt organisation if required.

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