Objective: The effects of interference, competition, and distraction on cognitive processing are unclearly understood, particularly regarding type and intensity of auditory distraction across a variety of cognitive processing tasks. Method: The purpose of this investigation was to report two experiments that sought to explore the effects of types…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of pretest items on response time in an operational, fixed-length, time-limited computerized adaptive test (CAT). These pretest items are embedded within the CAT, but unlike the operational items, are not tailored to the examinee's ability level. If examinees with higher ability levels need less…

This article describes a model for response times that is proposed as a supplement to the usual factor-analytic model for responses to graded or more continuous typical-response items. The use of the proposed model together with the factor model provides additional information about the respondent and can potentially increase the accuracy of the…

This study examined whether and to what extent the characteristics of mental models derived from the identical text, which is known to produce a certain type of mental model, are influenced if the subjects are given different task expectations before the reading session. Seventy-one undergraduates read one of the two text genres, descriptive or…

Perceptual-motor and cognitive processes whereby people perform multiple concurrent tasks have been studied through an overlapping-tasks procedure in which two successive choice-reaction tasks are performed with a variable interval (stimulus onset asynchrony, or SOA) between the beginning of the first and second tasks. The increase in subjects'…

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that graphs convey information effectively because they can display global trends as geometric patterns that visual systems encode easily. A novel type of graph was invented in which angles/lengths of line segments joined end-to-end represented variables of rainfall and temperature of a set of months. It was…

A study compared the performance of congenitally deaf signers (N=39) and hearing individuals (N=39) on a bilateral tachistoscopic task. Subjects were exposed to pretested linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli during the task. Analysis of response time indicated that deaf subjects were slower to respond than were hearing subjects across all…

This report summarizes the initial phase of research with neurological patients on timing functions. Parkinsonian, cerebellar, cortical and peripheral neuropathy patients as well as college aged and elderly control subjects were tested on two separate measures of timing functions. The first task involved the production of timed intervals and used…

The present research assessed the ability to attend to relevant information in the presence of irrelevant distraction in hyperactive (H), learning disabled (LD), and unselected (US) children. A total of 20 LD, 20 H, and 20 US children divided into younger and older age groups participated in the study. Younger children were between 94 and 104…

Preschoolers 4 and 5 years of age were found to use four strategies differing in temporal characteristics as they solved simple addition problems with sums of 10 or less. Three strategies had visible and/or audible aspects, and one was covert, involving retrieval from memory. The harder the problem, the more often the children used an overt…

Few phenomena in psychology have been studied more than reaction time. However, while response latency now provides the basic data for research in many areas of cognitive psychology, little work has been done on the problem of incorporating response latency in the measurement of individual differences. A solution to this problem requires the…

The studies reported here examined the role of orthographic regularity and summed positional frequency in the perception of letter strings. College sophomores and sixth graders were asked to indicate whether or not a target letter was present in a six-letter string. Orthographic regularity and summed positional frequency were found to have no…

This paper reports on a computer simulation of cloze retrieval tasks. It first outlines the ideas that were assembled and translated into the model used to compose the simulation and describes the method used in developing the simulation. It then reports on a comparison of the time required by a computer and by human subjects in responding to…

In two experiments subjects were required to determine whether a random, angular form, presented at any of a number of picture-plane orientations was a "standard" or "reflected" version. Average time required to make this determination increased linearly with the angular departure of the form from a previously learned orientation. (Author/BJG)

Recent research on human factors in the man-machine communications interface is reviewed and discussed as it relates to the problem of establishing optimal system response times for the various kinds of tasks performed at the computer terminal. Optimal system response time is operationally defined, and the conflicting demands of system design,…