Abstract
Reaction times to a pure tone in noise were measured. Throughout, the time from the warning signal to the reaction signal was exponentially distributed, and the signal was response terminated. Response criterion, signal intensity, and mean foreperiod wait were varied. A model that assumes a Poisson sensory transduction, a pulse-activated decision process, and an additive bounded residual process was tested. It was concluded that the assumed decision process was in error. Among the empirical results, the dependence of mean reaction time on signal waits was shown to depend largely on the average wait, not the actual one, and that this relationship between mean reaction time and average stimulus wait increased for strong signals and decreased for weak ones.
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This research was supported by Grant GB14049 from the National Science Foundation. The experimentation was carried out on computer facilities supported by Grant NB07454 from the National Institutes of Health. We are deeply indebted to Miss Virginia L. Maier who prepared the programs needed to run the experiments and for the programs used to analyze the data.
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Green, D.M., Luce, R.D. Detection of auditory signals presented at random times: III. Perception & Psychophysics 9, 257–268 (1971). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212645
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212645