Journal article
The roles of stimulus and response uncertainty in forced-choice performance: an amendment to Hick/Hyman Law
Psychological research, Vol.80(4), pp.555-565
07/2016
DOI: 10.1007/s00426-015-0675-8
PMID: 26059726
Abstract
Hick/Hyman Law describes one of the core phenomena in the study of human information processing: mean response time is a linear function of average uncertainty. In the original work of Hick, (1952) and Hyman, (1953), along with many follow-up studies, uncertainty regarding the stimulus and uncertainty regarding the response were confounded such that the relative importance of these two factors remains mostly unknown. The present work first replicates Hick/Hyman Law with a new set of stimuli and then goes on to separately estimate the roles of stimulus and response uncertainty. The results demonstrate that, for a popular type of task-visual stimuli mapped to vocal responses-response uncertainty accounts for a majority of the effect. The results justify a revised expression of Hick/Hyman Law and place strong constraints on theoretical accounts of the law, as well as models of response selection in general.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The roles of stimulus and response uncertainty in forced-choice performance: an amendment to Hick/Hyman Law
- Creators
- Tim Wifall - Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, E11 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52241, USA. twifall@gmail.comEliot Hazeltine - Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, E11 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52241, USAJ. Toby Mordkoff - Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, E11 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52241, USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Psychological research, Vol.80(4), pp.555-565
- Publisher
- Germany
- DOI
- 10.1007/s00426-015-0675-8
- PMID
- 26059726
- ISSN
- 0340-0727
- eISSN
- 1430-2772
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 07/2016
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984065375202771
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