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Tradeoffs of estimating reaction time with absolute and relative thresholds

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Abstract

Measuring the duration of cognitive processing with reaction time is fundamental to several subfields of psychology. Many methods exist for estimating movement initiation when measuring reaction time, but there is an incomplete understanding of their relative performance. The purpose of the present study was to identify and compare the tradeoffs of 19 estimates of movement initiation across two experiments. We focused our investigation on estimating movement initiation on each trial with filtered kinematic and kinetic data. Nine of the estimates involved absolute thresholds (e.g., acceleration 1000 back to 200 mm/s2, micro push-button switch), and the remaining ten estimates used relative thresholds (e.g., force extrapolation, 5% of maximum velocity). The criteria were the duration of reaction time, immunity to the movement amplitude, responsiveness to visual feedback during movement execution, reliability, and the number of manually corrected trials (efficacy). The three best overall estimates, in descending order, were yank extrapolation, force extrapolation, and acceleration 1000 to 200 mm/s2. The sensitive micro push-button switch, which was the simplest estimate, had a decent overall score, but it was a late estimate of movement initiation. The relative thresholds based on kinematics had the six worst overall scores. An issue with the relative kinematic thresholds was that they were biased by the movement amplitude. In summary, we recommend measuring reaction time on each trial with one of the three best overall estimates of movement initiation. Future research should continue to refine existing estimates while also exploring new ones.

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Data availability

The data and statistical analysis files for the present study are available at https://osf.io/RBYNF/. This experiment was not preregistered.

Code availability

G1.m is available for download from https://people.ok.ubc.ca/brioconn/gtheory/gtheory.html. There are also versions for SAS, SPSS, and R.

Notes

  1. The data and statistical analysis files for the present study are available at https://osf.io/RBYNF/.

  2. G1.m is available for download from https://people.ok.ubc.ca/brioconn/gtheory/gtheory.html. There are also versions for SAS, SPSS, and R.

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Acknowledgments

Our thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful critiques.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Kinesiology & Sport Management, Texas Tech University, Box 43011, Lubbock, TX, 79409, USA

    Jarrod Blinch, Coby Trovinger, Callie R. DeWinne, Guilherme de Cellio Martins, Chelsea N. Ifediora, Maryam Nourollahimoghadam, John R. Harry & Ty B. Palmer

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  1. Jarrod Blinch
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  2. Coby Trovinger
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Correspondence to Jarrod Blinch.

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Appendix

Appendix

Examples of the effective estimates of movement initiation

The figures below illustrate several estimates of movement initiation for one representative trial (participant 36, vision, block 1, trial 28). Each graph has three black vertical lines, which represent, in order, the go signal, movement initiation estimated by the switch, and movement termination.

Fig. 7
figure 7

Relative estimates of movement initiation based on 5% of maximum kinematics. Note. The grey dot shows the maximum of each kinematic, and the horizontal dashed line is 5% of that maximum. The vertical dashed line is when the kinematic data first exceeds the 5% thresholds.

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Fig. 8
figure 8

Relative estimates of movement initiation based on the extrapolation of kinematics or kinetics. Note. The grey dots show 25% of maximum, 75% of maximum, and maximum kinematics or kinetics. The sloped dashed line goes from 75% to 25% and then extrapolates back to the baseline. The dashed horizontal line is the intersection of the sloped dashed line and baseline, which is the estimate of movement initiation.

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Fig. 9
figure 9

Absolute estimates of movement initiation based on 50 mm/s and 1000 mm/s2. Note. The horizontal dashed line in the top and bottom graphs is 50 mm/s and 1000 mm/s2, respectively. The vertical dashed line is when the kinematic data first exceeds that threshold.

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Fig. 10
figure 10

Absolute estimates of movement initiation based on 10 mm/s and 200 mm/s2. Note. The horizontal dashed line in the top and bottom graphs is 10 mm/s and 200 mm/s2, respectively. The vertical dashed line is when the kinematic data first exceeds that threshold.

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Blinch, J., Trovinger, C., DeWinne, C.R. et al. Tradeoffs of estimating reaction time with absolute and relative thresholds. Behav Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02211-4

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