What’s my age again?

 

For humans there is nothing more important than time, it is the only thing in the world we have created a measure for, but yet cannot control. Think about the studies ofDarwin, the observation of finches on the galápagos (1859), for his findings time was a crucial factor affecting the nature of the birds as they evolved over generations. Likewise, historically there are many examples of discoveries that have only been made because of how time interacted in the experiment, for example the gravitational force,Newton(1687), without measuring time he could never have found the force of gravity.

 

In experimental psychology time is a vital component when testing subjects, just think about all the SONA experiments you have participated in the last two years, how many of them have measured reaction time?. Because we cannot measure the effects on stimuli directly on memory or behaviour, instead time functions as a substitute. When measuring reaction time, the aim is to find the difference in the processing of stimuli, and base conclusions hereafter.

 

Of course there is some problems using this process, for one, as we cannot determine the actual processes we cannot for sure say that the delay when showing a new stimuli is actually because of the new stimuli, but it might be that the subject for a split second got distracted by something else. And then if showing a similar set of stimuli, the one similar to the one processed without a distraction might be faster processed than the other, causing a continuous bias in all the trials.

 

However this bias that can interfere and is re-enforced by the learning effect is the only real limitation to reaction time studies, and according to Sternberg (2004) the use of reaction time has shown to show significant results over and over, and is the only way we currently have to our disposal when it comes to measuring mental abilities, and we can only show the difference between these processes with the measurement of time.

 

If you want to read more about the use of time measurements in experimental psychology, you can read about it on the following link: http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~saul/rt.experimentation.pdf

 

P.S. Happy Easter to all of you!!!!!!! 🙂