Reaction time

“ In complicated reaction-time experiments, where signals and motions, and clicks of the apparatus come in exceedingly rapid order, one is at first much perplexed in deciding what the order is, yet of the fact of its occupancy of time we are never in doubt. ”

“ The delay thus involved, added to the time required for the brain itself to act on the message from the eye, is distinctly appreciable, and every one is aware that individuals differ as to their reaction time. ”

“ Reflex reaction-time is relatively constant, instinctive varies considerably, and the variability of voluntary reaction-time is extremely large. Degree of variability of reaction-time may be used as an indication of consciousness in the same way that variability in the form of reaction is used. The higher the power of consciousness the greater the variety in form of reaction and the variability of the reaction-time.
Reaction-time studies, as well as introspection and the investigation of animal behavior, indicate the importance of three activity concepts: automatism, instinct, and will. ”

“ The same thing happens when the stimulus to be perceived is preceded, at a certain interval, by a single warning: the time is always notably shortened.... I have made comparative observations on reaction-time with and without a warning signal. The impression to be reacted on was the sound made by the dropping of a ball on the board of the 'drop apparatus.'... In a first series no warning preceded the stroke of the ball; in the second, the noise made by the apparatus in liberating the ball served as a signal.... Here are the averages of two series of such experiments:
"... ”

“ Of the value of reaction-time studies, one may well believe that it lies chiefly in the way of approach which they open to the understanding of the biological significance of the nervous system. Certainly they are not important as giving us knowledge of the time of perception, cognition, or association, except in so far as we discover the relations of these various processes and the conditions under which they occur most satisfactorily. ”

“ By making certain analyses and subtracting the time of the simple reaction from the time in the more complex case, it is possible to determine with considerable accuracy the time it takes to perceive, that is, the time passing from the moment at which an impression has reached consciousness until the moment at which we know what it is. In my own case about one twentieth of a second is needed to see a white light, one tenth of a second to see a color or picture, one eighth of a second to see a letter, and one seventh of a second to see a word. ”

“ The first thing that strikes us is the fact that many test persons show a marked prolongation of the reaction time. This would make us think at first of intellectual difficulties,—wrongly, however, as we are often dealing with very intelligent persons of fluent speech. ”

“ When the moment is stimulated to activity by an external object, the sensory stimulations of the present time-moment are new. Just these particular stimulations and sensory processes awakened have not occurred as yet in the life history of the animal, and still the object meets with its appropriate sensory response and motor reaction. ”

“ The simplest case we may suppose is a moment-consciousness set into activity by an appropriate stimulus. This activity runs a certain course and comes to an end; it ceases when the purpose of the moment is accomplished. A second stimulus will call forth a repetition of the activity, a recurrence of the phenomena; a third, a fourth, a fifth stimulus of the same kind will each time call to life the moment-consciousness; the moment will be produced again, will be reproduced. A repetition of the specific appropriate stimulus will be followed by a reproduction of the moment. ”

“ For your own grasp of the contents of your passing instant of consciousness faces at once a series of successive events, but also does not therefore bring before your insight all the successive contents of any present moment at any one temporal point within that present moment. What your own passing consciousness is to grasp at once, within the range of its own time-span, consists of facts which are successive one to another. ”

“ In our consciousness, however, the now of experience does mean just such an actual, brief, but still finite, interval or period of time, within which and during which events succeed one after another. ”

“ I do not hesitate to consider the physical phenomenon as anterior to the auditory image perceived in my consciousness, because I believe it is its cause.
Behold then the rule we follow, and the only one we can follow: when a phenomenon appears to us as the cause of another, we regard it as anterior. It is therefore by cause that we define time; but most often, when two facts appear to us bound by a constant relation, how do we recognize which is the cause and which the effect? ”

“ This is also our feeling based on our own experience. For instance, when we are involved in a complex activity, time seems to flow too fast and when we have nothing to do, time seems to flow very slowly. ”

“ I have never seen a use of the term which to my mind retained its sense if time-sequence is removed. We can, of course, talk of a power sustaining or producing effects, which are subordinate and yet not subsequent; but to talk thus is not to think. ”

“ And this is borne out by individual reflection. When striking and deeply interesting events follow one another very rapidly, as when we are travelling, duration appears to swell out.
It is possible that such a succession of stirring experiences may beget a vague consciousness of time at each successive moment, and apart from retrospection, simply by force of the change. In other words, without our distinctly attending to time, a series of novel impressions might, by giving us the consciousness of change, make us dimly aware of the numerical richness of our experiences. ”

“ In short, empty our minds as we may, some form of changing process remains for us to feel, and cannot be expelled. And along with the sense of the process and its rhythm goes the sense of the length of time it lasts. Awareness of change is thus the condition on which our perception of time's flow depends; but there exists no reason to suppose that empty time's own changes are sufficient for the awareness of change to be aroused. ”

“ Each percept then requires a separate brain-process; and when one brain-process is at its maximum, the other would appear perforce to be in either a waning or a waxing phase. If our theory of the time-feeling be true, empty time must then subjectively appear to separate the two percepts, no matter how close together they may objectively be; for, according to that theory, the feeling of a time-duration is the immediate effect of such an overlapping of brain-processes [Pg 638] of different phase—wherever and from whatever cause it may occur. ”

“ Even in the waking state, daily experience ought to teach us to distinguish between duration as quality, that which consciousness reaches immediately and which is probably what animals perceive, and time so to speak materialized, time that has become quantity by being set out in space. ”

“ Thus, if this supposition be true, there is an element in our concrete time perceptions which has no place in our abstract conception of Time. In Time physically conceived there is no trace of intensity; in time psychically experienced, duration is primarily an intensive magnitude, and so far literally a perception." Its 'original' is, then, if I understand Mr Ward, something like a feeling which accompanies, as pleasure and pain may accompany, the movements of attention. Its brain-process must, it would seem, be assimilated in general type to the brain-processes of pleasure and pain. ”

“ The temporal attributes are elements of perception no less direct than the intensity of the light or of the sound. The same holds for all other sensations. Time is an attribute common to all. But here, as in space, we cannot tell exactly in what respect all senses are similar so far as the nervous processes are concerned. It seems that these processes or their after effects continue a certain time after the stimulation has ceased.
Another attribute common to all sense impressions is the belonging-together of sensations, the unity in variety, so to speak. ”

“ But no series of experiences upon which attention is fixed is wholly indifferent to us; and the temporal aspect of such series always involves some element of expectancy and some sense of something that no longer is; and both these conscious attitudes color our interest in the presented succession, and give the whole the meaning of life. Time is thus indeed the form of practical activity ”

“ It is always a comparison of one flow or current of conscious experiences with another. It is the greater regularity of astronomical motions, as compared with changes or processes experienced as taking place within ourselves, that causes us to fix on the former as the more suitable standard for the measurement of time. “There is indeed,” writes Father Maher,380 “a certain rhythm in many of the processes of our organic life, such as respiration, circulation, and the recurrent needs of food and sleep, which probably contribute much to our power of estimating duration.... ”

“ Reflection leads us to the conclusion that it must exist, but that it does exist can never be a fact of our immediate experience. The only fact of our immediate experience is what has been well called 'the specious' present, a sort of saddle-back of time with a certain length of its own, on which we sit perched, and from which we look in two directions into time. The unit of composition of our perception of time is a duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were—a rearward-and a forward-looking end. ”

“ But the momentary experience is that of a man whose visual sensations have been organised by a life-time of strenuous intellectual control. The brain and the senses are but the organs of one function. ”

“ The functioning moments of a highly organized psychic being, at any point of time, present a hierarchy of moments differing not only in degree of consciousness, but also in the type of structure and function. Moments-consciousness from the lowest to the highest, from the simplest to the most complex, from the desultory type to the recognitive type of self-consciousness all are present in the adult stage of the most highly organized psychic life. ”

“ We have here presented on a diminutive scale the illusions which we see in our daily experience in comparing past with present stretches of time. It is a well-known psychological experience that a filled time appears short in passing, [89] but long in retrospect, while an empty time appears long in passing, but short in retrospect. ”

“ When the progressive motions of external bodies make a part of our present catenation of ideas, we attend to the lapse of time; which appears the longer, the more frequently we thus attend to it; as when we expect something at a certain hour, which much interests us, whether it be an agreeable or disagreeable event; or when we count the passing seconds on a stop-watch.
When an idea of our own person, or a reflex idea of our pleasures and pains, desires and aversions, makes a part of this catenation, it is termed consciousness ”

“ Thus a minute of mental time may, by the standards devised by man, be three hours deep, because we have lived it intensely; while an eon of mental time may embrace but half a day physically for reverse reasons. ”

“ If we inspect closely the reproductive moment-consciousness, we can discover in it definite traits specially characteristic of it. From the very character of its organization the moment-consciousness is of such a nature as to be accessible to and at the same time affected by definite stimuli of the external environment. ”

“ Not at this point, however, considering the dimensionality of feeling, the four simple combinations were first studied; such, for example, as (1) a pleasant color with a pleasant touch, (2) pleasant color with unpleasant touch, (3) unpleasant color with pleasant touch, and (4) unpleasant color with unpleasant touch.
III. This part of the work was an attempt to estimate the average time-interval in which feeling-tones develop, and what influences other feelings given simultaneously or immediately beforehand have upon the time-development of the feeling-tone in question. ”

“ That instant, or time-point, is the strict present. What we call, loosely, the present, is an empirical portion of the course of time, containing at least a minimum of consciousness, in which the instant of change is the present time-point.... ”

“ The same thing happens if, on the other hand, the time is so rapid that feelings of strain and relaxation cannot arise. In both cases it is obvious that any uncertain idea of time is only possible by reason of other extraneous factors. ”

“ In the case of time, for instance, it is found that we have to examine the connection between time as it is known to us by the mind's experience, i.e., psychological time, and time as it is measured by the course of physical phenomena, i.e., physical time. ”

“ To measure time by the state of our feelings would be as futile as an attempt to measure space by the slowness or impetuosity of our movements. Hours dwindle into minutes, and minutes are exaggerated into hours, according to the circumstances under which the mind moves on. ”

“ Dr. James Mark Baldwin, Stuart Professor of Psychology in Princeton University, U.S.A., called attention early in the 90’s to a reaction characteristic of all living beings, which he terms the “Circular Reaction.” We take his most recent account of this from his “Development and Evolution” (1902) :— [0h]
“The general fact is that the organism reacts by concentration upon the locality stimulated for the continuance of the conditions, movements, stimulations, which are vitally beneficial, and for the cessation of the conditions, movements, stimulations which are vitally depressing.” ”