Simplest Chronoscope III: Further Comparisons between Reaction Times Obtained by Meterstick versus Machine

Abstract

The three classical Donders' reaction time (RT) tasks (simple, choice, and discriminative RTs) were employed to compare reaction time scores from college students obtained by use of Montare's simplest chronoscope (meterstick) methodology to scores obtained by use of a digital-readout multi-choice reaction timer (machine). Five hypotheses were tested. Simple RT, choice RT, and discriminative RT were faster when obtained by meterstick than by machine. The meterstick method showed higher reliability than the machine method and was less variable. The meterstick method of the simplest chronoscope may help to alleviate the longstanding problems of low reliability and high variability of reaction time performances; while at the same time producing faster performance on Donders' simple, choice and discriminative RT tasks than the machine method.