Manipulations of the Response-Stimulus Intervals as a Factor Inducing Controlled Amount of Reaction Time Intra-Individual Variability.

Małgorzata Plechawska-Wójcik,Arkadiusz Podkowiński,Paweł Krukow

doi:10.3390/brainsci11050669

Małgorzata Plechawska-Wójcik, Arkadiusz Podkowiński + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11050669

Copy DOI

Abstract

Aggrandized fluctuations in the series of reaction times (RTs) are a very sensitive marker of neurocognitive disorders present in neuropsychiatric populations, pathological ageing and in patients with acquired brain injury. Even though it was documented that processing inconsistency founds a background of higher-order cognitive functions disturbances, there is a vast heterogeneity regarding types of task used to compute RT-related variability, which impedes determining the relationship between elementary and more complex cognitive processes. Considering the above, our goal was to develop a relatively new assessment method based on a simple reaction time paradigm, conducive to eliciting a controlled range of intra-individual variability. It was hypothesized that performance variability might be induced by manipulation of response-stimulus interval’s length and regularity. In order to verify this hypothesis, a group of 107 healthy students was tested using a series of digitalized tasks and their results were analyzed using parametric and ex-Gaussian statistics of RTs distributional markers. In general, these analyses proved that intra-individual variability might be evoked by a given type of response-stimulus interval manipulation even when it is applied to the simple reaction time task. Collected outcomes were discussed with reference to neuroscientific concepts of attentional resources and functional neural networks.

Highlights

Published: 20 May 2021The studies analysing relatively simple, yet speed-dependent elementary cognitive processes, most often using experiments where response time is the primary indicator of performance are among the most classical strands of psychology and neurosciences [1]
In the majority of chronometric research, the main outcome of applied tasks is a series of reaction times (RTs) enabling computation of mean RT, but a set of consecutive RTs is often characterized by more or less pronounced fluctuations giving insight into the scope of trial-to-trial intra-individual variability (IIV) [2,3]
12 participants were eliminated, 3 subjects lacked complete data set, 4 had the percentage of errors higher than 25%, in case of another 3 participants the correction for manual speed generated negative numbers for individual standard deviations (iSD) in one task and the RTs series of 2 subjects were characterized by a standout number of empty boxes after data deletion according to other criteria, we decided to remove them due to the possibly increased tendency to generate random, though not explicitly erroneous reactions

Summary

Introduction

The studies analysing relatively simple, yet speed-dependent elementary cognitive processes, most often using experiments where response time (or reaction time: RT) is the primary indicator of performance are among the most classical strands of psychology and neurosciences [1]. In the majority of chronometric research, the main outcome of applied tasks is a series of RTs enabling computation of mean RT (mRT), but a set of consecutive RTs is often characterized by more or less pronounced fluctuations giving insight into the scope of trial-to-trial intra-individual variability (IIV) [2,3]. It was shown that in major psychotic and affective disorders [12,13,14], as well, as in individuals

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion