Abstract
Decision time, also known as choice reaction time, has been frequently discussed in the field of psychology. The Hick–Hyman Law (HHL) has been a fundamental model that has revealed the quantitative relationship between the mean choice reaction time of human and the information entropy of stimuli. However, the HHL is only focused on rule-based behavior in which rules for selecting response according to stimulus are certain and neglects to model the knowledge-based behavior in which choices are uncertain and influenced by human belief. In this article, we explored the decision time related to one basic knowledge-based behavior—uncertain binary choice, where selections of response are determined by human belief degrees but not by stimuli uncertainties. Two experiments were conducted: one for verifying the HHL and the other for uncertain binary choice. The former (experiment) demonstrated the effectiveness of the HHL, and the latter one indicated that there is an exponential relationship existing between decision time and entropy of belief degree in uncertain binary choice. Moreover, data obtained from both experiments showed that the disturbance term of decision time should not be seen as probabilistic as existing studies have assumed, which highlighted the necessity and advantage of uncertain regression analysis.
Highlights
Decision time, known as choice reaction time, is one of the important indexes used to characterize human performance [1]
The uncertain regression model (30) can be seen as a good fit to the observed data. This indicated that there is an exponential relationship existing between decision time and entropy of belief degree in uncertain binary choice
We mainly explored the relationship existing between decision time and difficulty of choice in one basic knowledge-based behavior—uncertain binary choice
Summary
Known as choice reaction time, is one of the important indexes used to characterize human performance [1]. In the 1950s, Hick [2] and Hyman [3] applied information theory to conduct several experiments and proposed a famous law called the Hick–Hyman Law (HHL). It demonstrated that the mean choice reaction time of humans would increase linearly as corresponding information entropy of stimuli raises. The inspiration for founding the HHL is intuitive, which is based on the fact that the more complex decisions always require longer time to initiate [1]. Methods of improving and refining the HHL [4,5,12] have been frequently discussed
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