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Automatic alerting does not speed late motoric processes in a reaction-time task

Abstract

When an irrelevant ‘accessory’ stimulus is presented at about the same time as the imperative signal in a choice reaction time-task, the latency of the voluntary response is markedly reduced1. The most prominent cognitive theories agree that this effect is attributable to a brief surge in arousal (‘automatic alerting’), but they disagree over whether the facilitation is localized to a late, low-level motoric process2 or to an earlier stage, the process of orienting to and then perceptually categorizing the reaction stimulus3,4. To test these alternative hypotheses, we used the onset of the lateralized readiness potential (a movement-related brain potential) as a temporal landmark to partition mean reaction time into two time segments. The first segment included the time required to perceive the visual stimulus and decide which hand to react with; the second included only motoric processes. Presentation of an irrelevant acoustic stimulus shortened the first interval but had no effect on the second. We therefore rejected the motoric hypothesis.

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Figure 1: Predictions regarding the pattern of latency effects that should be observed under the two alternative hypotheses (upper and lower halves of the figure).
Figure 2: Grand average lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) and forearm electromyograms (EMG) for trials in which the visual reaction stimulus was presented alone (dashed lines) or was accompanied by an irrelevant auditory stimulus that was presumed to increase momentarily the subject's level of arousal (solid lines).

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Acknowledgements

We thank W. Gehring for the software used for the correction of ocular artefacts and J. Miller, N. Cowan and G. Gratton for discussions. This research was supported by grants from the NIH, the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture, and the regional government of Galicia.

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Correspondence to Steven A. Hackley.

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Hackley, S., Valle-Inclán, F. Automatic alerting does not speed late motoric processes in a reaction-time task. Nature 391, 786–788 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/35849

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