RT Tests Involving Retrieval of Information in LongTerm Memory
This test paradigm, originated by Posner, Boies, Eichelman, and Taylor 1969 , is intended as a measure of the speed of retrieval of highly overlearned verbal codes in long-term memory LTM . It actually consists of two distinct discrimination tests. The difference between their mean RTs is the point of interest. The binary decision in every case is Same or Different. One task, labeled physical P , requires discrimination Same Different between two letters of the alphabet based solely on their...
Factor Analysis of Chronometric and Psychometric Variables Together
This is the most analytic method of looking at the relationship between the two classes of measurements. In terms of the number of RT measures both direct and derived obtained from several ECTs and the number of PTs, the factor analysis by Carroll 1991b of the data from Kranzler and Jensen 1991 , described in the previous section p. 171 , is probably the most revealing. Carroll performed Schmid-Leiman orthogonalized hierarchical factor analysis of these data, which comprised correlations among...
Chronometric Correlations with Conventional Mental Tests
That fact that chronometric measures are correlated with scores on PTs of mental abilities is now firmly established. Presently, active researchers in this field have reviewed much of this evidence from various theoretical perspectives and have drawn remarkably similar conclusions Caryl et al., 1999 Deary, 2000a, b Detterman, 1987 Jensen, 1982, 1985, 1987a, 1998, Chapter 8 Lohman, 2000 Neubauer, 1997 Vernon, 1987 . A true meta-analysis of all this evidence, however, is neither feasible, nor...
The Introduction of RT Measurement in Physiology
It was not until 1850 that it occurred to anyone to actually measure NCV directly. The physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz 1821-1894 first did it on bullfrogs, using the nerve-muscle preparation known to all students of physiology, whereby the hind leg's gastrocnemius muscle and its attached nerve are isolated and the nerve is simulated by a fine electrode at various distances from its attachment to the muscle, while the resulting muscle twitch is recorded by a spring kymograph...
Factor Analysis and Factor Structure
Factor analysis is used to describe the structure of a given correlation matrix of n variables in terms of a number of source traits, or latent variables, that cannot be directly measured but are hypothesized to explain the pattern of correlations among the n observed variables. The factor analysis begins with a matrix of correlation coefficients among a set of directly measured variables, V1, V2, ,Vn, such as test scores. The computational procedure extracts from the correlation matrix a...
An AgeRelated Global Factor in Processing Speed
The most impressive programs of research on the developmental aspects of mental-processing speed are those conducted by Robert Kail and Sandra Hale. Both are leading experts in the field of experimental developmental psychology. Their research programs arrive independently at very similar and unifying conclusions. The major publications issuing from their programmatic research are cited in Kail 1991a,b , Hale 1990 , Fry and Hale 1996 . The most important point on which their findings converge...
Age Effects in Standard Reaction Time Paradigms
Besides the generalization that various measures of RT increase with age in later maturity, two other generalizations are commonly seen in the RT literature 1 Younger-older age differences in RT are an increasing function of task complexity i.e., the information processing load . 2 RT increases as a function of the amount of information that has to be retained to complete the task or the task's demand on what is referred to as the working memory WM . The latter condition is typically controlled...
Experimental Variables and Procedures that Affect RT
The effects of the following variables are described here only in general terms of direction and magnitude. Specific quantitative values vary markedly with the nature of experimental conditions and of the subject sample, of which detailed descriptions would necessarily have to accompany any quantitatively precise conclusions. The various experimental conditions that are known to influence RT need to be taken into account in the design of any particular paradigm and apparatus for the measurement...
Psychophysics Psychometrics Chronometrics
For understanding the role of mental chronometry in the behavioral sciences it will be useful to distinguish it from the two other major disciplines in the behavioral sciences concerned with measurement psychophysics and psychometrics. Psychophysics has a venerable history, probably longer than that of any other branch of empirical psychology, dating from the mid-nineteenth century. Still a field of contemporary research, it deals quantitatively with the functional relationship between the...
Contrasting the Approaches of Experimental and Differential Psychology
Although the main focus of this book is on individual differences in Reaction times RTs and their relationship with other psychological variables, investigators in that sphere should be mindful of the many experimental variables that can affect the measurement of RT. To date, the research literature on the differential psychology of RT is minuscule compared to the vast literature on the experimental psychology of RT. Yet, in any RT experiment individual differences generally account for more of...
Timed Involuntary Responses
The eye blink reflex elicited by an external stimulus such as a loud noise or flash of light or a tap on the forehead is an involuntary response. It is distinguishable in latency and amplitude from spontaneous blinks and blinks made under voluntary or conscious control. The latency and amplitude of the blink reflex, elicited by a mechanical tap to the glabella i.e., the area between the eyebrows , can be measured noninvasively with great precision by means of an optical apparatus designed for...
The Experimental Psychology of RT
Research based on RT measurement can be said to have become truly mental chronome-try in the work of the Dutch physiologist Frans C. Donders 1818-1889 , whose research monograph,On the speed of mental processes, was published in 1868 for English translation, see Donders, 1969 . Donders complicated the RT procedure beyond the measurement of simple reaction time SRT , or a single response to a single stimulus. He also measured RTs involving choice CRT and discrimination DRT between two or more...
Astronomers Interest in RT
RT research also had another origin in astronomy. The story is now legendary. In 1795, England's Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, at the Greenwich Observatory, discovered that his assistant, David Kinnebrook, was consistently in error in his readings of the time that a given star crossed the hairline in a telescope. He was usually about half a second behind Maskelyne's measurements. This was intolerable for a calibration considered essential for standardizing the accuracy of time measurement...
Mental Chronometry And Individual Differences
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