A study of disjunctive reaction times

To decide what to do means to choose an appropriate response to a situation. In the simplest case, the situation may be one of several stimuli, to each of which there is a “correct response.” Other studies have indicated that the latency of the response is positively correlated with the number of stimuli from which the stimulus presented is selected, or more specifically, that the latency is approximately a linear function of the uncertainty (measured in information units) of the stimulus. The present study turns attention to possible neural models to explain such results and to account for the observed statistical distributions of reaction times associated with the recognition of the stimulus and with the decision to act.