Timing and reaction time.

Abstract

Because reaction time (RT) tasks are generally repetitive and temporally regular, participants may use timing strategies that affect response speed and accuracy. This hypothesis was tested in 3 serial choice RT experiments in which participants were presented with stimuli that sometimes arrived earlier or later than normal. RTs increased and errors decreased when stimuli came earlier than normal, and RTs decreased and errors increased when stimuli came later than normal. The results were consistent with an elaboration of R. Ratcliff's diffusion model (R. Ratcliff, 1978; R. Ratcliff & J. N. Rouder, 1998; R. Ratcliff, T. Van Zandt, & G. McKoon, 1999), supplemented by a hypothesis developed by D. Laming (1979a, 1979b), according to which participants initiate stimulus sampling before the onset of the stimulus at a time governed by an internal timekeeper. The success of this model suggests that timing is used in the service of decision making.

Temporal preparation facilitates perceptual identification of letters

“…We found a main effect of foreperiod length [F(1,19) posed by Rolke and Hofmann (2007). According to this account, temporal preparation accelerates the onset of the accumulation process in the short-foreperiod condition (see also Grosjean, Rosenbaum, &Elsinger, 2001, andSimon &Slaviero, 1975, for similar suggestions). In the case of a backward-masking paradigm, the identification of a stimulus critically depends on the effective processing time, because the backward mask interrupts the processing of the target and erases its visual memory trace (Kahneman, 1968;Sperling, 1963).…”

759Temporal tuning in the acquisition of cognitive skill

“…A model that integrated the goal-driven processing of production-system models (e.g., Anderson & Lebiere, 1998) with information-processing mechanisms for the control of timing (e.g., Grosjean et al, 2001;Rosenbaum, 1998) might account for this phenomenon. Such a model might integrate work on the timing of perceptual-motor skills with mechanisms that capture the operator-operand structure of symbolic cognitive skills.…”

“…Previous research has demonstrated the learning of timing constraints in perceptual-motor (Dominey, 1998) and cognitive tasks (Carlson, Shin, & Wenger, 1994). Grosjean, Rosenbaum, and Elsinger (2001) have recently demonstrated that individuals learn timing in repetitive choice reaction time tasks, producing increased error rates or slowed responding when displays appear earlier or later than expected. Research on skilled anticipation (e.g., Rowe & McKenna, 2001) suggests that expertise in a variety of real-world tasks is characterized by the acquired ability to anticipate the time course of events.…”

The Parallel Episodic Processing (PEP) model 2.0: A single computational model of stimulus-response binding, contingency learning, power curves, and mixing costs

“…Episodic models can also learn to anticipate when to respond. In any repetitive performance task, responding becomes highly rhythmic (Grosjean, Rosenbaum, & Elsinger, 2001). That is, participants begin responding at a similar speed from one trial to the next.…”