Exceptions to Hick's law: Explorations with a response duration measure.

Abstract

Five experiments used a new response-duration measure in explorations of the conditions necessary for confirmation of Hick's law. Hick's law states that reaction time increases logarithmically with number of choices. Exceptions to the law, venerable as it is, have been reported. They have always included the following conditions: a verbal response; a familiar stimulus with a single dominant name; and a large number of practice trials. These conditions have carried a heavy explanatory burden in accounting for the anamolous results. The present studies use none of these conditions and yet manage to replicate the anamolous result of a very shallow slope across set size, a slope less than one-tenth the usual value. This was accomplished by using a novel task in which the initial component of the response is the same for all stimuli (depression of a single response key) but the termination of the response is different (different durations for each stimulus). Using this task, a slope in the neighborhood of 15 ms per bit of stimulus uncertainty is found, as compared with the usual value of about 150 ms. A number of possible explanations are examined. Among the most important are the possibilities that response overlap is the critical factor (i.e., duration errors overlap); possible stimuli are simply ignored when more than one is involved; and the duration decision is made after the reaction-time interval rather than during it. All three possibilities, as well as some others, are found to be inconsistent with the various experimental outcomes. Instead, a new theory of choice reaction time is presented, which emphasizes the nature of the S-R code that is assumed to represent various reaction-time tasks. This theory leads to a new "law" that is put forward as a replacement for Hick's law. It is RT = a + b(1 - N-1).

Toward an artificial sensory feedback system for prosthetic mobility rehabilitation: Examination of sensorimotor responses

“…This time increases in the case when multiple stimuli are presented or when there is uncertainty about the stimulus that is forthcoming. This is commonly referred to as "Hick's law," which states that as the number of stimuli-response alternatives increase, RTs also increase in a linear form [39].…”

Hick’s law: Its limit is 3 bits

“…In all of them, a curvilinear function is obtained. Longstreth's power law better fits the data (Longstreth, El-Zahhar, & Alcorn, 1985). It is concluded that Hick's law is an approximation to the complete power function and that it becomes noticeably deficient only beyond 3 bits of stimulus uncertainty (i.e., 8 choices).…”

Impact of familiarity on information complexity in human-computer interfaces

“…So, it has been shown e.g. by [13] that for unknown alternatives RT increases even linearly with N, but has almost no increase for well-known options -which also calls for introduction of the familiarity factor in the corresponding model. Thus, in the next section we explore the impact of familiarity in the specially designed experiment and outline some notable results.…”

“…The slope in thus formulated Hick-Hyman law (1), b H , in simplest cases is believed to be equal to 150 ms [13], then the corresponding Hick's rate of gain of information ( 1 H b ) is equal to 6.7 bits/sec. This rate varies significantly due to subjects' age, gender, arousal, fatigue, etc., and also due to training a familiarity with the stimuli.…”