Reaction times can reflect habits rather than computations
- Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States
- Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, United States
Abstract
Reaction times (RTs) are assumed to reflect the underlying computations required for making decisions and preparing actions. However, recent work has shown that movements can be initiated earlier than typically expressed without affecting performance; hence, the RT may be modulated by factors other than computation time. Consistent with that view, we demonstrated that RTs are influenced by prior experience: when a previously performed task required a specific RT to support task success, this biased the RTs in future tasks. This effect is similar to the use-dependent biases observed for other movement parameters such as speed or direction. Moreover, kinematic analyses revealed that these RT biases could occur without changing the underlying computations required to perform the action. Thus the RT is not solely determined by computational requirements but is an independent parameter that can be habitually set by prior experience.
Article and author information
Author details
Alexander D Forrence
Funding
National Science Foundation (BCS-1358756)
- Adrian M Haith
- John W Krakauer
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01-NS097423)
- Jeff Goldsmith
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R01-HL123407)
- Jeff Goldsmith
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: All participants provided written informed consent and were naive to the purposes of the study. Experimental methods were approved by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine institutional review board.
Copyright
© 2017, Wong et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Reaction times can reflect habits rather than computations
eLife 6:e28075.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.28075
