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Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research 4/2016

10-06-2015 | Original Article

The roles of stimulus and response uncertainty in forced-choice performance: an amendment to Hick/Hyman Law

Auteurs: Tim Wifall, Eliot Hazeltine, J. Toby Mordkoff

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 4/2016

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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.
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Metagegevens
Titel
The roles of stimulus and response uncertainty in forced-choice performance: an amendment to Hick/Hyman Law
Auteurs
Tim Wifall
Eliot Hazeltine
J. Toby Mordkoff
Publicatiedatum
10-06-2015
Uitgeverij
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Gepubliceerd in
Psychological Research / Uitgave 4/2016
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-015-0675-8

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