Moving Beyond the Mean in Studies of Mental Chronometry: The Power of Response Time Distributional Analyses
Moving Beyond the Mean in Studies of Mental Chronometry: The Power of Response Time Distributional Analyses
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DOI：
10.1177/0963721411408885
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发表时间：
2011-06-01
影响因子：
7.2
通讯作者：
Yap, Melvin J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Balota, David A.;Yap, Melvin J.
虽然人们普遍认为反应时间(RT)分布几乎总是正偏态的，而且数学心理学家已经开发出直接的方法来捕捉RT分布的特征，但研究人员仍然主要依赖于平均性能，这对于这样的数据可能具有误导性。我们回顾了捕捉潜在RT分布特征的简单程序，并展示了这些程序最近如何有助于更好地理解标准认知实验范式和个体表现差异的影响。这些充分研究的理解RT分布的程序表明，平均数的影响可以通过(A)RT分布的移动，(B)RT分布的慢尾的拉伸，或(C)某种组合来产生。重要的是，均值的影响实际上可以被RT分布的模式和尾部的相反影响所掩盖。这种截然不同的模式需要新奇的理论解释。
Although it is widely recognized that response time (RT) distributions are almost always positively skewed and that mathematical psychologists have developed straightforward procedures for capturing characteristics of RT distributions, researchers continue to rely primarily on mean performance, which can be misleading for such data. We review simple procedures for capturing characteristics of underlying RT distributions and show how such procedures have recently been useful to better understand effects from standard cognitive experimental paradigms and individual differences in performance. These well-studied procedures for understanding RT distributions indicate that effects in means can be produced by (a) shifts of RT distributions, (b) stretching of slow tails of RT distributions, or (c) some combination. Importantly, effects in means can actually be obscured by opposing influences on the modal and tail portions of RT distributions. Such disparate patterns demand novel theoretical interpretations.