This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.118.192.71 (talk) at 14:56, 16 December 2006 (→Factors: duplicate entries, confusing entries commented out for now). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 14:56, 16 December 2006 by 68.118.192.71 (talk) (→Factors: duplicate entries, confusing entries commented out for now)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)With regards to reflexes, reaction time is the time from the onset of a stimulus until the organism responds.
Types
- Simple reaction time is the time it takes to react to stimuli.
- Complex reaction time is the latency between a variable stimulus and a respectively variable response.
- Go/NoGo (also called Recognition) reaction time task in which participants respond to one particular event but ignore other events
- Choice reaction time task in which participants respond differentially to two stimuli by pressing one key for event A and a separate key for event B.
At the University of New South Wales, slower reaction times has been studied as a contributing factor in falls of elderly.
Factors
The major factors affecting reaction time are:
- Recognition
- Choice
- Number of stimuli
- Type of stimulus
- Stimulus intensity
- Diseases, such as chicken pox
- Distractions
- Fatigue
There are many other factors that can also affect reaction time:
- Practice and error
- Gender
- Age
- Race (Tubman, 1993)
- Finger Tremors (Brebner and Welford, 1980)
- Right vs. left hand (Dane and Erzurumluoğlu, 2003)
- Vision (Direct vs. Peripheral) (Brebner and Welford, 1980)
- Sobriety
- Breathing Cycle (Buchsbaum and Calloway, 1965)
- Stimulant Drugs (Caffeine) (Lorist and Snel, 1997)
- Psychological Stability
History of the field
Physical scientists such as Archimedes and philosophers such as Aristotle conducted many observations involving aspects of chronometric measurement; however the tools or impetus to measure cognitive reaction time apparently was not developed, or simply has not left a significant traceable thread in the literature. The literature in other fields, e.g., epigraphical evidence, remnants of papyri, sherds, and other source material is uncertain and warrants additional investigation. An understanding of physical reaction time is critical for fields such as ballistics, archery, athletics and the physical sciences in order to estimate and measure.
References
Jensen, A. R. (1993). "Spearman's hypothesis tested with chronometric information processing tasks". Intelligence. 17: 47–77. Andrew Roddam - King's Baptist Grammar School
External links
- Sample Reaction Chronometric Reaction Time Test by Cognitive Labs
- Reaction Speed Flash Test by HumanBenchmark