Separate modifiability, mental modules, and the use of pure and composite measures to reveal them

Mental chronometry and individual differences: Modeling reliabilities and correlations of reaction time means and effect sizes

“…This model makes it possible to distinguish between general and task-specific processing times, and the influences of these times on various observable correlations can be assessed, thereby helping to elucidate the precise meanings of such correlations. This model is attractive because of its simplicity, generality, and extensive theoretical development (e.g., Donders, 1868Donders, /1969Smith, 1969;Sternberg, 1969Sternberg, , 2001. At the same time, as was discussed in the section "The individual differences in reaction time (IDRT) model," it seems plausible that the conclusions emerging from this simple model system would also be applicable within more detailed models providing a richer description of specific RT tasks (Hillis, 1993).…”

“…According to the general IDRT model, the total RT is the sum of latencies of several processing stages intervening between the stimulus and the response (e.g., Sternberg, 1969Sternberg, , 2001. The model is agnostic with respect to the nature of the processing within each stage, so this processing could conform to assumptions of diffusion models (e.g., Ratcliff, 1978), accumulator models (e.g., Usher & McClelland, 2001;Vickers, 1970), parallel models (e.g., Townsend & Nozawa, 1995), and so on.…”

Effects of VDT and paper presentation on consumption and production of information: Psychological and physiological factors

“…However, if both primary and secondary task workloads are varied, the cognitive nature of the tasks themselves may be analyzed. In accordance with the Additive-Factor Method (Sternberg, 2001), interactions between the two tasks indicate that they are based on the same cognitive resource, whereas if the reaction times are additive, the tasks will utilize different mental resources. Although the secondary tasks described above have been shown to be effective, they are rather impractical since participants need to be constantly monitored by the researcher as well as in solitude in order not to disturb each other.…”

What is the point of motor planning?

“…About 100 years later, Sternberg (1969) adopted this method as a basis to develop a highly influential paradigm for studying highspeed scanning in working memory. Even though Sternberg himself viewed his additive factor method (AFM) as an extension of Donders' subtraction method, it actually provides a qualitatively new procedure for decomposing reaction times (see Sternberg, 1998Sternberg, , 2001). …”

“…However, experts' absolute reaction times were significantly faster than those of nonathletes on both positive and negative responses. Following the logic of the additive factors method (Sternberg, 1975(Sternberg, , 2001, this indicates that experts encoded relevant features of the non-categorical material more quickly than nonathletes. Nonetheless, what is important here is that the memory search did not differ between the two groups.…”