5.2.9

Outline factors that determine response time.

            Response time is ability, having individual and group variance (for example, gender and age).

·      Gets faster during childhood/adolescence

·      Gets slower as we get older

·      Movement time depends on fitness

·      Number of choices to be made

·      Males have quicker reactions than female, but the reaction times of females deteriorate less quickly than males

Reaction time includes stimulus transmission, detection, recognition, decision to respond, nerve transmission time and initiation of action.

•       Hick’s Law: Hick (1952) found that as you double the number of stimulus-response couplings there is a linear increase in response time