Auditory Vs. Visual Reaction Time

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As Table 1 shows, the mean reaction time to visual stimulus is greater than the mean reaction time to auditory stimulus. The chi-squared value of 9.600 in Table 2 allows us to reject our null hypothesis that there is no difference between auditory and visual reaction times. This result is consistent with our predicted outcome and it also supports Brebner and Welford (1980). Reaction time to a stimulus depends on many factors, including the reception of the stimulus by the eyes, the transmission of a neural signal to the brain, muscular activation, and finally, the physical reaction to the stimulus (Pain and Hibbs, 2007). The reaction times to auditory stimulus were shorter than to visual stimulus, implying that the auditory stimulus reaches the motor cortex …show more content…

We only obtained ten reactions from each subject, so any outliers in the results could cause great discrepancies in the calculated mean values for each test. In the future, each subject should preform each test a greater number of times to obtain a large data set that is resistant to outliers. Another bias in the experiment could be caused by gender differences. Our subjects consisted of four females and two males, which may have affected our results. The reaction time for both auditory and visual stimulus is shorter for males than for females (Engel, 1972). Because we had more female subjects than male subjects, our data might be skewed towards slower reaction times for both tests. In addition, the lab was a bit loud. Therefore, the auditory reactions could have been biased towards slower times because it could have been difficult to hear the auditory stimulus. Future investigations would account for this excess noise, ensuring that the testing location is quiet and that the subjects can adequately hear the auditory stimulus. Visual reaction times are faster when the subject is directly looking at the stimulus (Brebner and Welford,

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