Question

Briefly explain the 5 experiments preformed in "Donders's assumption of pure insertion: an evaluation on the basis of response dynamics" by Ulrich, and explain the results and its significance.

Answer 1

Donder's assumption of pure insertion: an evaluation on the basis of response dynamics by Ulrich is an in-depth work in cognitive psychology.

Here, pure insertion means an assumption behind many studies that employ cognitive subtraction. Subtraction generally takes place between two measures, involving the same respondent (mostly). A cognitive subraction basically is a subtraction between two tasks.

In this study, the magnitude and time course of response force were measured. This measurement was done in three classical reaction time (RT) tasks:

1. Simple RT

2. Go/Nogo

3. Choice RT

Basic Assumption

Donder's original assumption was that the response execution process operates identically in the simple and choice RT tasks. The response activation would be more in the Go/Nogo task.

The experiments:

1. Simple Reaction Time: Here, a stimulus was presented that needed to be detected. The response executed by the subject was noted.

2. The Choice Reaction Time Task: Here, the presented stimulus needed to be detected and identified. The subject needs to select the appropriate response and then the response needs to be executed.

3. Go/Nogo Reaction Time Task: Here, the stimulus needs to be detected, identified and response needs to executed.

In Choice Reaction Time Task, there is an option of selecting the appropriate response whereas in the Go/Nogo Reaction Time Task this option was subtracted.

4. This experiment was identical to experiment 3, except that the choice task was replaced by simple RT task.

5. Experiment 5 focused on the Go/Nogo task as compared to Choice task.

Findings:

The results of the first two experiment showed that response force was virtually identical for the simple and choice RT tasks.

The third experiment conducted Simple RT tasks and the fourth experiment conducted Choice RT tasks.

The findings of these experiments supported the basic assumption stated by Donder, that is the response activation was more in the Go/Nogo experiment.

Significance:

Donder claimed that the Go/Nogo experiment had more response activation since here the participants did not have the choice of selecting the appropriate response. As Donder said, "some people give the response when they should have remained silent".