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Die Abhängigkeit der Reaktionszeit von der zeitlichen Folge optischer Reize

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Summary

An apparatus consisting of (a) a small computer, (b) an oscilloscope light-dot controlled by it, and (c) a pencil-shaped peg containing three accelerometers, which are sampled at 150μsec intervals by the computer, has been used to measure simple reaction time for human hand-movement. The stimulus, a jump of the light dot, was presented without a warning signal in series of 100 jumps either after a fixed period or a random time. The average interstimulus interval (ISI) was between 1.3 and 15.8 sec. For every parameter set 1,000 reaction times (RTs) were accumulated during 10 different days.

The main results are: (a) RT increases with increasing mean ISI; (b) RT is longer for random ISIs than for constant ones; (c) RT increases slightly with time accumulating during runs; (d) within a series of random ISIs, RT is neither depending on the value of the last ISI before reaction nor on that of the last but one; (e) the probability distribution of RTs has a standard deviation increasing with mean ISI and from periodic to random ISI, and a non-negligible, roughly constant skewness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physikalisches Institut der Universität Freiburg i.Br., Germany

    R. Täumer, Ch. Schlier, C. Schmidt & W. Schupp

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  1. R. Täumer
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  2. Ch. Schlier
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  3. C. Schmidt
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  4. W. Schupp
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Additional information

Jetzt: Universitäts-Augenklinik Freiburg i.Br.

Zur Zeit: CRESS, York University, Toronto, (Canada).

Wir danken Herrn Prof. B. Hassenstein für manche Diskussion über kybernetische Probleme und einen ersten Hinweis auf die Fragen der gezielten Handbewegung. Der Rechner stand aus Mitteln zur Verfügung, die vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Wissenschaft für andere Experimente zur Verfügung gestellt waren, wir möchten auch für diese Unterstützung danken. Schließlich danken wir der Zentralstelle für Luftfahrt-Dokumentation und -Information, München, für wertvolle Literaturhinweise.

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Täumer, R., Schlier, C., Schmidt, C. et al. Die Abhängigkeit der Reaktionszeit von der zeitlichen Folge optischer Reize. Kybernetik 7, 183–191 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00289405

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00289405

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