The Relationship between Reaction Time and Intensity in Discrete Auditory Tasks

Molen, Maurits W. van der; Keuss, P.J.G.

doi:10.1080/14640747908400709

Cited by 75 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The question of the locus of this paradoxical prolongation of RT remains open. Some evidence derived from an AFM experiment indicates that this effect is due to prolongation of sensory, rather than motor, processes (van der Molen & Keuss, 1979). However, further research is needed to settle this issue.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Van der Molen and Keuss (Keuss & van der Molen, 1982;van der Molen & Keuss, 1979 showed that RTs to very loud auditory stimuli were longer than those to stimuli of moderate intensity. This effect was recently demonstrated by Ja kowski and Włodarczyk (2006) for large and bright visual stimuli.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors tried to explain this null effect by making the assumption that "increasing auditory intensity shortens the latency of early sensory and perceptual processes, prolongs subsequent processes up to the onset of hand-specific response activation, and has no effect on duration of motor processes following hand-specific response activation" (Miller, Ulrich, & Rinkenauer, 1999, p. 1465. They further speculated about why such two contradictory processes might take place by referring to the effect described by van der Molen and Keuss (Keuss & van der Molen, 1982;van der Molen & Keuss, 1979van der Molen & Orlebeke, 1980). Van der Molen and Keuss showed that for auditory stimuli, the relation between RT and loudness depended on the task: Whereas RT monotonically decreased with intensity for the simple and the go/no-go tasks, the relation was flatter or even U-shaped when tasks were more difficult (e.g., the choice or Simon task).…”

Section: Event-related Readiness Potentialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is particularly true for simple reactions, but not always for more complex tasks (see, e.g., van der Molen & Keuss, 1979). Stimulus intensity has usually been considered a factor influencing only very early stages of information processing.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Locus of the intensity effect in simple reaction time tasks

Jaśkowskí

Kurczewska

Nowik³

et al. 2007

Perception & Psychophysics

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1334Reaction time (RT) is known to decrease as a function of stimulus intensity, approaching an asymptote for the most intense stimuli. This is particularly true for simple reactions, but not always for more complex tasks (see, e.g., van der Molen & Keuss, 1979). Stimulus intensity has usually been considered a factor influencing only very early stages of information processing. Evidence supporting this view has come both from studies employing the additive factors method (AFM) and from psychophysiological measures. It has been shown that the intensity effect on RT is additive with the effects of other factors, such as foreperiod duration, stimulus-response compatibility, number of alternatives, stimulus probability, and practice (e.g., Everett, Hochhaus, & Brown, 1985;Niemi, 1979;Raab, Fehrer, & Hershenson, 1961;Sanders & Andriessen, 1978;Schweickert, Dahn, & McGuigan, 1988; Shwartz, Pomerantz, & Egeth, 197). According to AFM, the additivity of intensity and other factors means that the stage affected by intensity is different from the stages affected by those other factors. Therefore, one might reasonably assume that this particular stage occurs very early in processing, distant from other stages. This claim has gained further support from electrophysiological studies in which the effect of intensity on simple RT and on the latency of early components of event-related potentials (ERPs) have been directly compared. Using this approach, Vaughan, Costa, and Gilden (1966), Wilson and Lit (1981), and Ja kowski, Pruszewicz, and widzi ski (1990) found that visual intensity had identical effects on simple RT and on the latency of the N1 component. These findings suggested that the processes later than those reflected by the N1 (which peaks at about 100-150 msec) are independent of stimulus intensity. Evidence from a number of other studies, however, is in conflict with this view. Locus of the intensity effect in simple reaction time tasks ROLF VERLEGER University of Lübeck, Lübeck, GermanyEvidence is still inconclusive regarding the locus of the stimulus intensity effect on information processing in reaction tasks. Miller, Ulrich, and Rinkenauer (1999) addressed this question by assessing the intensity effect on stimulus-and response-locked lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) as indices of the sensory and motor parts of reaction time (RT). In the case of visual stimuli, they observed that application of brighter stimuli resulted in a shortening of RT and stimulus-locked LRP (S-LRP), but not of response-locked LRP (R-LRP). The results for auditory stimuli, however, were unclear. In spite of a clear RT reduction due to increased loudness, neither S-LRP nor R-LRP onset was affected. A reason for this failure might have been a relatively small range of intensity variation and the type of task. To check for this possibility, we performed three experiments in which broader ranges of stimulus intensities and simple, rather than choice, response tasks were used. Although the intensity effect on the R-LRP was negligible, ...

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Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Event-related Readiness Potentialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Locus of the intensity effect in simple reaction time tasks

Jaśkowskí

Kurczewska

Nowik³

et al. 2007

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…It had been reported that the louder the auditory signal is, the faster the reaction can be obtained 6 . This could provide an explanation as to why longer RTs were required for responses to the rear signal.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical Ergonomics for the Use of Auditory and Visual Signals for Improving System Performance

Chan

2006

Measurement and Control

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People are generally fairly consistent in the choices they make in selecting responses to stimuli. The term 'population stereotype' is used to describe this phenomenon, which suggests that for most people there are preferred pairings between elements in the stimulus set of a display with those in the response set of a control device. In human-machine studies, population stereotypes are usually expressed as the probability with which a response is chosen, whereas stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility is often illustrated by the speed and accuracy with which a response is elicited. It is a common finding that compatible pairings lead to faster reaction times (RTs) and lower error rates than incompatible pairings. Spatial stimulusresponse compatibility refers to situations where selection of a response is directly related to the position of a stimulus 1 .Basic research aimed at fundamental understanding of spatial S-R compatibility with visual stimuli has been conducted with tasks involving the pressing of a right or left key in response to a light appearing to the right or left of a fixation point on a screen. Reactions associated with spatially compatible S-R pairings were faster than those with incompatible S-R pairings 2-4 . The reduction of visual RT in spatially compatible S-R pairing has been thought to arise from a "natural" tendency to respond in the direction of stimulation. The concept of spatial compatibility, however, has been explained by the hypothesis of spatial coding which involves the mental coding of positional information of the signal and response, and the anatomical coding of responding hands. The incompatible pairing of signal and response positions requires an additional translation step in reversing the spatial codes and thus reaction time is extended and more errors are committed usually 2 .Although research has been conducted on spatial compatibility using visual stimuli, the study of spatial compatibility with auditory stimuli is rare. Due to the fundamentally different natures of visual and auditory stimuli and the increasing importance of auditory stimuli in control consoles and other applications, the first experiment designed here investigated the spatial compatibility effect of auditory signals in transverse and longitudinal orientations. Visual and auditory displays are ubiquitous in human tasks, for example, with control consoles in cockpit operation, precise machine operation and interactive driving simulation. Consequently there is an increasing concern to understand the interactions and relationships, and in particular the compatibility between the displays and controls in such tasks. In practical situations, operators need to attend to signals of different modalities concurrently transmitted from a variety of machinery and equipment in industrial environments. Given the obvious importance of the use of two signal modalities in person-machine interfaces, the second experiment was designed to investigate the spatial compatibility effect of visual and auditory signals on longitu...

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Combined effects of motor response, sensory modality, and stimulus intensity on temporal reproduction

et al. 2015

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The ability to estimate a filled interval of time is affected by numerous non-temporal factors, such as the sensory modality, duration, and the intensity of the stimulus. Here we explore the role of modality (auditory or visual), stimulus intensity (low vs. high), and motor response speed on the ability to reproduce the duration of short (<1 s) filled intervals. In accordance with the literature, the reproduced duration was affected by both the modality and the intensity of the stimulus; longer reproduction times were generally observed for visual as compared to auditory stimuli, and for low as compared to high-intensity stimuli. We used general estimating equations in order to determine whether these factors independently affected participants' ability to reproduce a given duration, after eliminating the variability associated with reaction time, since it covaried with the reproduced durations. This analysis revealed that stimulus duration, modality, and intensity were all significant independent predictors of the reproduced durations. Additionally, duration interacted with intensity when reproducing auditory intervals. That is, after taking into account the general speeding-up effect that high-intensity stimuli have on responses, they seem to have an additional effect on the rate of the internal clock. These results support previous evidence suggesting that auditory and visual clocks run at different speeds.

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The Relationship between Reaction Time and Intensity in Discrete Auditory Tasks

Cited by 75 publications

References 14 publications

Locus of the intensity effect in simple reaction time tasks

Locus of the intensity effect in simple reaction time tasks

Practical Ergonomics for the Use of Auditory and Visual Signals for Improving System Performance

Combined effects of motor response, sensory modality, and stimulus intensity on temporal reproduction

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