100% satisfaction guarantee Immediately available after payment Both online and in PDF No strings attached
logo-home
Summary Task 1 - response time and cognitive architecture $4.38   Add to cart

Summary

Summary Task 1 - response time and cognitive architecture

 8 views  1 purchase
  • Course
  • Institution

Summary of Task 1 of Methods of Cognitive Neuroscience

Preview 2 out of 12  pages

  • March 5, 2024
  • 12
  • 2023/2024
  • Summary
avatar-seller
TASK 1: RESPONSE TIME AND COGNITIVE
ARCHITECTURE
REACTION TIMES: A READER 2.0 (SMULDERS, 2020)


HOW IS REACTION TIME MEASURED & INTERPRETED?

REACTION TIME (RT)

 Trials are repeated many times to get reliable mean RT (mRT)
 Operational definition: time between onset of stimulus & the response to that stimulus
 Theoretical definition: minimum of time needed by participant to produce correct
response

WHY MEASURE REACTION TIME?


Reliability &  RT highly sensitive to subtle differences between conditions (effects of few
orderliness milliseconds can be found reliably)
 Results display orderliness  easier to construct models of underlying
info processing


Scale  Ratio level – scale of measuring RT  can be directly interpreted in
properties physical sense
 Meaningful zero-point, linear
 RT measure “real time”, which is variable of interest (e.g., Subtraction
Method, AFM, car driver hits brakes unexpectedly)
 Time as NOT the variable of interest but RT is still used
 Implicit Association Task – stimulus categories associated with left- &
right-hand responses; strength of implicit associations has effect on
RT
 Association strength DOES NOT inherit strong scale properties of
physical time


Measuring  RT paradigms that propose modules that are involved in performing
established specific functions (e.g., memory, perception, attention, decision-
functions making, emotion, language)
 RT models have guided brain researchers “what to look for” when making
brain scans


LIMITATIONS

 RT only reflects end product of processing – cognitive functions themselves are hidden
 Cognitive functions = black box

,  Can only make inferences about what happens between manipulation of input and
observed effect on output
 RT mostly used in simple tasks – easier to study than complex ones
 Complex tasks may lead to more different strategies used by participants 
experimental noise
 Individual differences in how tasks are carried out

THE ANALYSIS OF RT AT 2 LEVELS


First level  Aim: obtain for each participant one / few summary statistics per condition
(mRT, proportion of accurate responses)


Accuracy  Throw out trials from practice blocks & warm-up trials
 Remainder of trials sorted & counted according to condition
 Number of correct responses in each condition counted +
proportion of accurate responses computed


Reaction  Delete practice, warm-up & error trials
time  Inspect distribution of RTs for each participant & condition to
identify outliers
 Long responses – inattentiveness
 Fast responses – respond before (fully) analysing stimulus;
guess after failing to reach a decision
 Removing outliers
 Median – bias if observation number small & different
across conditions
 Trimmed mean – take out e.g., fastest & slowest 10%, then
take mean of the rest
 C standard deviations – first compute mean & SD for each
participant, then delete RTs that deviate more than C (C
= 2.5) SDs from mean
 Fixed criterion – delete all RTs exceeding some value &
compute mean of the rest (could lead to bias & loss of
statistical power)
 Do nothing – should be a conscious choice
 Outliers & cognitive neuroscience
 Removing trials with RT-outliers from neuroimaging data
 Deleting RTs from trials that are rejected from EEG / fMRI
because of method-specific artifacts

The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.

Quick and easy check-out

Quick and easy check-out

You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.

Focus on what matters

Focus on what matters

Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!

Frequently asked questions

What do I get when I buy this document?

You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.

Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?

Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.

Who am I buying these notes from?

Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller emma2296. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.

Will I be stuck with a subscription?

No, you only buy these notes for $4.38. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.

Can Stuvia be trusted?

4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)

79650 documents were sold in the last 30 days

Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now

Start selling
$4.38  1x  sold
  • (0)
  Add to cart