The Vital Role of The American Journal of Psychology in the Early and Continuing History of Mental Chronometry

Abstract

The American Journal of Psychology (AJP) was founded in 1887 by G. Stanley Hall during what Edwin G. Boring (1950) called the Period of Mental Chronometry and, consistent with the prevailing interests of the time, featured articles of relevance to scientists in this research domain. Contained in the early volumes of AJP were several articles that examined what have become some of the enduring issues faced by researchers studying the structure and timing of mental processing using reaction time (RT) procedures. Collectively, RT research published in AJP during its early years contributed to establishing mental chronometry as an important subfield of psychology. From 1900 to 1950 interest in mental chronometry waned, during what has been called its Dark Age. Nonetheless, interest in the effects of factors such as age and intelligence on total RT continued unabated. Numerous articles pertinent to these effects appeared in AJP. Finally, with the publication of Neisser’s (1963) seminal work on visual search, AJP played an important role in reviving interest in mental chronometry in the latter half of the 20th century and continues in its 125th year of existence to contribute pertinent articles on contemporary research in mental chronometry.

Children's supernatural thinking as a signalling behaviour in early childhood

“…Reaction time has been used extensively in research from the very beginning of psychological science (Cattell, ) and has proved to be a reliable index that can provide powerful insights into the nature of cognitive processing and decision‐making in many different realms (see, e.g., Meyer, Osman, Irwin, & Yantis, ; O'Shea & Bashore, , for an historical account). Typically, whether based on simple or choice reaction‐time tasks, reaction time has been considered as a composite measure assessing different processing stages between the onset of the sensory stimuli and a subject's instrumental or physical response (Pachella, ; Sternberg, ; Verdonck & Tuerlinckx, ).…”

How does a collision warning system shape driver's brake response time? The influence of expectancy and automation complacency on real-life emergency braking

“…Since the origin of scientific psychology, the factors that are able to influence RT were analyzed. Psychologist and physiologist have measured the difference of RT as function of physiological variables such as the duration and intensity of the signals (Froeberg, 1907;Hsieh et al, 2007), as well as methodological variables such as simple vs. recognition vs. choice experiment (Donders, 1869;O'Shea and Bashore, 2012). Brake reaction time (BRT) is considered a multicomponent cognitive skill (Deery, 1999), susceptible to driving experience (Crundall et al, 1999;Horswill and McKenna, 2004), subjective risk perception and emotional evaluation of the driving situation (Kiss et al, 2007;Rosenbloom et al, 2011) and dependent on driver's expectations.…”

Exposing an “Intangible” Cognitive Skill Among Collegiate Football Players: III. Enhanced Reaction Control to Motion

“…Choice reaction tasks require participants to discriminate which of two or more stimuli are presented and then select among available response options based on pre-determined mappings between stimuli and responses; thus, choice reactions involve both stimulus discrimination and response choice (Donders' b-reaction). For an historical overview of these types of reactions and the pioneering work of F. C. Donders in developing the seminal partitioning of basic speeded reactions, see O'Shea and Bashore (2012). response to a stimulus event, they may not serve as proxies for changes in the speed of components of a decision-making process as stimulus and response demands are increased.…”

“…We use highly-refined, laboratory-based RT tasks that have evolved from pioneering research in mental chronometry by the Dutch physiologist F.C. Donders and the founding father of experimental psychology at the University of Leipzig, Wilhelm Wundt, in the last 35 years of the nineteenth century (Boring, 1950;O'Shea and Bashore, 2012). These tasks have been developed to discover, quantify, and map specific cognitive processes onto specific stimulus and response processing demands.…”