In radical behaviorism, the difference between overt and covert responses does not depend on properties of the behavior but on the sensitivity of the measurement tools employed by the experimenter. Current neuroscientific research utilizes technologies that allow measurement of variables that are undetected by the tools typically used by behavior…

We propose and evaluate a memory-based model of Hick's law, the approximately linear increase in choice reaction time with the logarithm of set size (the number of stimulus-response alternatives). According to the model, Hick's law reflects a combination of associative interference during retrieval from declarative memory and occasional savings…

Many athletes display great sport skills in noncompetitive situations such as during practice, but fail to successfully execute these same skills in competition. Coaches often wonder (1) from a technical perspective, why is the good performance of athletes during practice sessions not transferred to actual competition; (2) what are the flaws of…

To pursue goal directed behavior, the cognitive system must be shielded against interference from irrelevant information. Aside from the online adjustment of cognitive control widely discussed in the literature, an additional mechanism of preventive goal shielding is suggested that circumvents irrelevant information from being processed in the…

Backward inhibition (BI) refers to a reaction time cost incurred when returning to a recently abandoned task compared to returning to a task not recently performed. The effect has been proposed to reflect an inhibitory mechanism that aids transition from one task to another. The question arises as to precisely what aspects of a task may be…

A race-like model is developed to account for various phenomena arising in simple reaction time (RT) tasks. Within the model, each stimulus is represented by a number of grains of information or activation processed in parallel. The stimulus is detected when a criterion number of activated grains reaches a decision center. Using the concept of…

Despite its avowed goal of understanding individual behavior, the field of behavior analysis has largely ignored the determinants of consistent differences in level of performance among individuals. The present article discusses major findings in the study of individual differences in intelligence from the conceptual framework of a functional…

An inequality by J. O. Miller (1982) has become the standard tool to test the race model for redundant signals reaction times (RTs), as an alternative to a neural summation mechanism. It stipulates that the RT distribution function to redundant stimuli is never larger than the sum of the distribution functions for 2 single stimuli. When many…

Proposes a parallel distributed-processing (PDP) model to account for choice-reaction-time performance in diverse cognitive and perceptual tasks that are interrelated in terms of stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response overlap. Simulation results support the PDP model. (SLD)

A model with fixed relations between manifest and latent variables is presented for investigating choice reaction time data. The numbers for fixation originate from the polynomial function. Two options are considered: the component-based (1 latent variable for each component of the polynomial function) and composite-based options (1 latent…

A model of information processing has been developed that combines concepts from the study of attention and the study of problem solving. The model has been realized as a computer program and used to simulate a variety of phenomena from the attention and performance literature. (Author/LMO)