The Relation between Simple Reaction Time and Improvement with Practice in a Discrimination Response Task.

Abstract

Subjects were 45 females. They were stratified on simple reaction time into three groups, group with fast simple reaction time, moderate reaction time and slow reaction time. Then, all the groups were demanded to practice 12 series of the visual discrimination response tasks. In the early stages of practice, there was no significant difference concerning discrimination response time among three groups. However, difference in response time became clear between "fast group" and other two groups, along with the progress of trials. To examine the fact further, discrimination response time was fractionated into 2 phases, namely time of initiating response and movement time. Initiating response time of the "fast group" was shorter than other two groups' throughout the process, but there was no significant difference among movement time of the three groups. Simple reaction time was highly correlated with discrimination response time at the end of the trial (r=0.70).