A neural analogue of the worst performance rule: Insights from single-trial event-related potentials

Saville, Christopher W. N.; Beckles, Kevin D.O.; Macleod, Catherine; Feige, Bernd; Biscaldi, Monica; Beauducel, André; Klein, Christoph

doi:10.1016/j.intell.2015.12.005

Cited by 16 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(41 reference statements)

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“…This is an interesting result in its own right, but in the context of single-trial analysis it is important because it suggests that differences between conditions in terms of latency cannot be attributed to differences in signal-to-noise ratio. Our single-trial analysis technique has identified effects on amplitude in some previous studies (Saville et al 2011 , 2014 ), but not others (Saville et al 2015b , 2016 ) suggesting that it is sensitive to such effects when they are present.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

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Effects of caffeine on reaction time are mediated by attentional rather than motor processes

et al. 2017

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BackgroundCaffeine has a well-established effect on reaction times (RTs) but the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this are unclear.MethodsIn the present study, 15 female participants performed an oddball task after ingesting caffeine or a placebo, and electroencephalographic data were obtained. Single-trial P3b latencies locked to the stimulus and to the response were extracted and mediation models were fitted to the data to test whether caffeine’s effect on RTs was mediated by its effect on either type of P3b latencies.ResultsStimulus-locked latencies showed clear evidence of mediation, with approximately a third of the effect of caffeine on RTs running through the processes measured by stimulus-locked latencies. Caffeine did not affect response-locked latencies, so could not mediate the effect.DiscussionThese findings are consistent with caffeine’s effect on RTs being a result of its effect on perceptual-attentional processes, rather than motor processes. The study is the first to apply mediation analysis to single-trial P3b data and this technique holds promise for mental chronometric studies into the effects of psychopharmacological agents. The R code for performing the single trial analysis and mediation analysis are included as supplementary materials.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s00213-017-4790-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“… 2 This is a shorter time window than our previous papers (e.g. Saville et al 2016 ). However, given the relatively simple task, we compared mixed effects models predicting RT using peaks obtained using these windows and the longer windows (250–1000 ms, −375–375 ms).…”

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confidence: 80%

Effects of caffeine on reaction time are mediated by attentional rather than motor processes

et al. 2017

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“…Ratcliff, Thapar and McKoon [43] confirmed the WPR in different tasks only for a group of older adults but not for college students. Similarly, Saville et al [12] did not observe the WPR in n-back-task data from 50 university students. These reports challenge the universality of the WPR and suggest that it may only manifest under specific conditions.…”

Section: The Egm Parameter σ Predicts Gfmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…This regularity, termed the Worst Performance Rule (WPR) by Larson and Alderton [9], has been repeatedly reported for different populations, RT measures, tasks and modalities and does not appear to be a consequence of data artifacts such as outliers, variance restriction or reliability problems (for a review see [10]). Not all studies, however, were able to support the WPR [11,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting Fluid Intelligence by Components of Reaction Time Distributions from Simple Choice Reaction Time Tasks

et al. 2016

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Mean reaction times (RT) and the intra-subject variability of RT in simple RT tasks have been shown to predict higher-order cognitive abilities measured with psychometric intelligence tests. To further explore this relationship and to examine its generalizability to a sub-adult-aged sample, we administered different choice RT tasks and Cattell's Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFT 20-R) to n = 362 participants aged eight to 18 years. The parameters derived from applying Ratcliff's diffusion model and an ex-Gaussian model to age-residualized RT data were used to predict fluid intelligence using structural equation models. The drift rate parameter of the diffusion model, as well as σ of the ex-Gaussian model, showed substantial predictive validity regarding fluid intelligence. Our findings demonstrate that stability of performance, more than its mere speed, is relevant for fluid intelligence and we challenge the universality of the worst performance rule observed in adult samples.

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“…Based on our current findings, therefore, the observed relationship between nervous system reliability and attractiveness preferences cannot be explained by physical health, sexual dimorphism or fluctuating asymmetry. One further factor to consider as a potential explanatory variable is psychometric g, which has been shown to be negatively correlated with reaction time variability (Larson & Alderton, 1991;Schmiedek et al, 2007; but see Saville et al, 2016 for a counterexample). Given the necessarily imperfect correlation between reaction time variability and IQ, the effect of g on facial appearance would have to be very large to account for the whole of our effects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical attraction to reliable, low variability nervous systems: Reaction time variability predicts attractiveness

et al. 2017

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The human face cues a range of important fitness information, which guides mate selection towards desirable others. Given humans' high investment in the central nervous system (CNS), cues to CNS function should be especially important in social selection. We tested if facial attractiveness preferences are sensitive to the reliability of human nervous system function. Several decades of research suggest an operational measure for CNS reliability is reaction time variability, which is measured by standard deviation of reaction times across trials. Across two experiments, we show that low reaction time variability is associated with facial attractiveness. Moreover, variability in performance made a unique contribution to attractiveness judgements above and beyond both physical health and sex-typicality judgements, which have previously been associated with perceptions of attractiveness. In a third experiment, we empirically estimated the distribution of attractiveness preferences expected by chance and show that the size and direction of our results in Experiments 1 and 2 are statistically unlikely without reference to reaction time variability. We conclude that an operating characteristic of the human nervous system, reliability of information processing, is signalled to others through facial appearance.

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A neural analogue of the worst performance rule: Insights from single-trial event-related potentials

Cited by 16 publications

References 31 publications

Effects of caffeine on reaction time are mediated by attentional rather than motor processes

Effects of caffeine on reaction time are mediated by attentional rather than motor processes

Predicting Fluid Intelligence by Components of Reaction Time Distributions from Simple Choice Reaction Time Tasks

Physical attraction to reliable, low variability nervous systems: Reaction time variability predicts attractiveness

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