Lecture 2 - Information Processing Flashcards
What is reaction time?
- The time that it takes for you to start responding to a certain event
- Measure of time it takes to process information
What is information processing?
- The interval between the start of an unanticipated stimulus & the initiation of the response
- refers to deciding what to do to achieve a goal
What is movement time?
- The interval between the start of the movement & the end
- Response time = RT + MT
What are the 8 factors influencing reaction time?
- age
- sex
- hand use
- arousal
- intelligence
- fatigue
- distraction
- caffeine
How does age influence reaction time?
- Decreases (or faster) through childhood till the late 20s
- Will start to increase slowly until 50-60 years then rapidly after 70
How does sex influence reaction time?
- Males are typically faster at reacting whereas females are more accurate
- New studies suggest male advantage is reduced because women take part in activities requiring quick responses
How does arousal influence reaction time?
- Reaction time is faster with a normal degree of arousal
How does intelligence influence reaction time?
- People with intellectual disability suffer with slower reaction time
- Higher intelligent people tend to have a faster reaction time
How does fatigue influence reaction time?
- More fatigued individuals will have a slower reaction time
How does distraction influence reaction time?
- Distraction will increase reaction time
- I.e., cell phones
How does caffeine influence reaction time?
- Moderate doses of caffeine will decrease reaction time
What are 3 factors that affect stimulus identification?
- stimulus clarity
- stimulus intensity
- stimulus modality
What is stimulus clarity?
- Target in central vs. peripheral vision
- Visual RTs are quicker in central vision as opposed to peripheral vision
What is stimulus intensity?
- the strength of the sensory input to the brain, after a certain point, there is a stabilization
- Froeberg (1907) found that a higher intensity visual stimulus produced faster RTs
- Wells (1913) found the same thing for an auditory stimulus
- Piéron (1920) & Luce (1986) found slower RTs for a weak stimulus
What is stimulus modality ?
- Visual RT: 180-200 ms
- Tactile RT: 155 ms
- Auditory RT: 140-160 ms
- Auditory stimulus takes 8-10 ms to reach the brain while visual stimulus takes 20-40 ms
What is donder’s subtractive method?
- assumed there was a series of separate information processing stages between a stimulus & a response
- Stages in serial order, need to be completed in order:
- Stimulus detection
- Stimulus identification
- Response selection
- Response execution
What were the 3 types of reaction time tasks made by Donders?
- simple reaction time
- choice reaction time
- Go/No go reaction time
- All three tasks have different stages
- Difference in RT between two tasks represents the time required to perform a specific step
What is simple reaction time?
- One possible stimulus & one possible response
- Only have to detect the stimulus & execute the response
What is choice reaction time?
- Faced with 2 or more stimuli & 2 or more possible responses
- must detect a stimulus occurred & identify it (since there is more than. One option), then select the appropriate response & execute it
What is Go/No go reaction time?
- Have 2 stimuli but only respond to 1
- Detect the stimulus, identify which one was presented then execute the response
What are the 5 stages of information processing?
- input
- stimulus identification stage
- response selection stage
- movement programming stage
- output
What is the input stage of information processing?
- Information to be processed by the human
- The human information-processing system requires more time to process larger amounts of information than it does smaller amounts
What is the stimulus identification stage of information processing?
- decide whether a stimulus has been presented &, if so, what it is
- System analyzes environmental information from a variety of sources
- Components of stimuli are assembled & Patterns of movement are detected
What is the response selection stage of information processing?
- deciding what response to make, given the nature of the situation & environment
- Process of determining what to do & how it should be done
What is the movement programming stage of information processing?
- preparing the motor system to make the desired movement
- Ready the mechanisms in brain stem and spinal cord for action
- Retrieve and organize a motor program
What is the output stage of information processing?
- Stages involved in producing motor output
- Focus of motor control research
What is Hick’s law?
- Time required to make a decision about a response is linearly related to the amount of information that must be processed
- RT increases proportionally every time the number of S-R alternatives is doubled
What are the expectations of Hick’s law?
- Relationship between S & R has an effect on response selection: when skills are highly over learned or biologically “natural”, response selection between several alternatives can be facilitated
- Practice in choice RT
- Tactile stimuli
- Eye movement response
