A model of the uncertainty effects in choice reaction time that includes a major contribution from effector selection.

Hick's law describes the relation between choice reaction time (RT) and the number of stimulus-response alternatives (NA). For over half a century, this uncertainty effect has been ascribed primarily to the time taken to map a stimulus to its associated response. Here, data from 2 experiments suggests that selection of the appropriate effector-the particular body part to make a response-also contributes substantially to the uncertainty effect. This insight is important both for our understanding of basic cognitive architecture and because many classic experiments studying stimulus-response mapping have confounded NA with the number of effectors. Our data also suggest that, when stimuli are spatial and linked to the responses in an intuitively simple layout, the time required for stimulus-response mapping depends minimally on the NA, independent of effector. Experiment 1 demonstrated that in order to account for the complex patterns of uncertainty effects observed when stimulus type (spatial vs. symbolic), response mode (typing, with multiple effectors vs. touching with a single, known effector), and participant population (skilled vs. novice typists) are all manipulated a model is required that includes effector selection, along with stimulus-response mapping, and a proper treatment of stimulus-response repetitions. Using spatial indicator stimuli that minimized the contributions of stimulus-response mapping, Experiment 2 compared 4 effector conditions-the factorial combination of 1 or 3 fingers on one or both hands. The results showed that the increase in the uncertainty effect associated with the number of effectors is negatively accelerated and possibly additive across the variation of hands and fingers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Exploring attention-based explanations for some violations of Hick's law for aimed movements.

Choice reaction time generally increases linearly with the logarithm of the number of potential stimulus-response alternatives, a regularity known as Hick's law. Two apparent violations of this generalization, which have been reported for aimed eye movements (Kveraga, Boucher, & Hughes, Experimental Brain Research, 146, 307-314, 2002), and arm movements (Wright, Marino, Belovsky, & Chubb, Experimental Brain Research, 179, 475-496, 2007), occurred when the indicator stimulus was an abrupt change at the location that was the target of the to-be-made movement. We report two experiments that examined and rejected the hypothesis that these abrupt-onset indicator stimuli triggered a shift in exogenous attention and that this led to unusually small uncertainty effects. Each experiment compared this indicator stimulus with a single alternative: Experiment 1 tested an indicator stimulus at all locations other than the target; Experiment 2 tested a central pointer to the target. Neither alternative led to an uncertainty effect for pointing responses that was of the size typically observed for other responses using the same stimuli.

Visually guided, aimed movements can be unaffected by stimulus-response uncertainty.

Response times generally increase linearly with the logarithm of the number of potential stimulus-response alternatives (e.g., Hick's law). The ubiquity and theoretical importance of this generalization make exceptions particularly interesting. Recently, Kveraga et al. (Exp Brain Res 146:307, 2002) added a third to the two previously known exceptions, demonstrating that saccade latencies were unaffected by stimulus-response uncertainty. They suggest that visually guided saccades are exceptional, because these movements can be automatically selected using a privileged pathway: the topographically organized regions in superior colliculus that convert spatially coded visual activity into spatially coded motor commands. We report that visually guided, aimed hand movements also are unaffected by both stimulus-response uncertainty and stimulus-response repetition. A second experiment demonstrated that this lack of an uncertainty effect persists for equiluminant stimuli. This result suggests that posterior parietal cortex is not the privileged pathway eliminating stimulus-response uncertainty for hand movements. Because hand movements are not guided by mechanisms in the superior colliculus, our results cast doubt on the privileged-pathway hypothesis, at least for hand movements. Instead, the absence of stimulus-response uncertainty may occur only in tasks that do not require the stimulus to be associated with a response effector and that have high stimulus-response compatibility.