A Literature Review on Reaction Time

Reaction time has a been a favorite subject of experimental psychologists since the middle of the nineteenth century. However, most studies ask questions about the organization of the brain, so the authors spend a lot of time trying to determine if the results conform to some mathematical model of brain activity. This makes these papers hard to understand for the beginning student. In this review, I have ignored these brain organization questions and summarized the major literature conclusions that are applicable to undergraduate laboratories using my Reaction Time software. I hope this review helps you write a good report on your reaction time experiment. I also apologize to reaction time researchers for omissions and oversimplifications.