Reaction Time Lab
Uploaded by scam655 on Mar 28, 2022
Reaction Time Lab
Reaction time is a measure of how quickly an organism can respond to a particular stimulus. The stimulus is processed by your nervous system before you are able to react, and the time lag is your reaction time. Many factors have been shown to affect reaction times, including age, gender, physical fitness, fatigue, distraction, alcohol, personality type, and whether the stimulus is visual (sight), auditory (hearing), tactile (touch), olfactory (smell) or gustatory (taste).
The model for information flow within an organism can be represented in this way:
Stimulus → Sensory Neuron → Spinal Cord or Brain → Motor Neuron → Response
Sensory neurons convert a stimulus into an electro-chemical signal, which flows the length of the sensory neuron(s), then through a neuron or neurons of the central nervous system, and then through the length of the motor neuron(s). Generally, motor neurons will cause a muscle to contract or a gland to secrete a substance. Reactions that involve only the receptor, the spinal cord, and the effector, are faster than those which involve processing in the brain. Reactions which only travel to, through, and from the spinal cord are often called spinal reflexes or cord-mediated reflexes; withdrawing one’s hand from a hot stove is an example of such a reflex. In ‘simple reaction time’ experiments, there is only one stimulus and one response. Catching a dropped stick, or hitting a button when a light changes are examples.
Visual: Online Reaction Time Test
Test Number
Reaction Time (s)
1 0.303
2 0.011
3 0.202
4 0.244
5 0.289
Average
0.2098
Auditory:What is Your Reaction Speed to Sound?
Test Number
Reaction time (ms)
1 263
2 227
3 174
4 291
5 249
Average
241
Analysis:
When looking at your results, did you respond faster to the auditory or visual stimuli? (moving the decimal 3 places left will put the visual into ms, instead of seconds) Compare your results to a classmate.
I responded faster to visual stimuli.
Why did you run several trials?
Because the first time I did the test I could have messed up or did better than I normally would meaning the data would be inaccurate.
Explain why a message moving along nerve pathways takes time.
The response time may be slow.it has to travel more sensory → spinal cord → brain → motor
Reflex arcs differ from the traditional response-stimulus...