Effects of alcohol and practice on choice reaction time
DOI: 10.3758/bf03209754
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates the effects of alcohol and practice on choice reaction time (CRT), addressing methodological deficiencies in prior research that often failed to account for practice effects or the speed-error tradeoff. The authors aimed to determine whether alcohol impairs performance efficiency or merely shifts response criteria, and to examine how practice interacts with alcohol-induced deficits. Forty subjects participated in a four-choice CRT experiment involving two sessions on consecutive days, with the order of alcohol administration counterbalanced. In the alcohol session, subjects consumed 1 ml of alcohol per kilogram of body weight mixed with orange juice and water; the control session involved a placebo drink. Each session consisted of 50 practice trials followed by 2,000 experimental trials. Performance was measured using mean and median reaction times, standard deviations, and error rates. The authors analyzed speed-error tradeoff functions (SETOFs) by combining data across subjects to assess changes in performance efficiency. Results indicated that alcohol significantly slowed reaction times, increased variability, and reduced accuracy compared to the no-alcohol condition. Practice also improved performance, with subjects being faster and less variable in the second session regardless of alcohol condition. Crucially, the analysis of SETOFs revealed that practice had little effect on the shape of the tradeoff function, whereas alcohol substantially altered it. Specifically, responses made within 600 milliseconds of stimulus presentation were significantly more likely to be erroneous under alcohol than without. Additionally, alcohol increased the number of consecutive errors. Linear regression analyses confirmed that the increase in response variability under alcohol was consistent with the slowing of mean reaction time, rather than representing an independent increase in noise. The findings suggest that the primary effect of alcohol on speeded tasks is a decrease in the rate of accumulation of evidence. This interpretation aligns with a model where alcohol shifts the SETOF to the right, meaning subjects require more time to accumulate sufficient evidence for a correct decision. Consequently, rapid responses are more likely to be errors because they are based on insufficient evidence. The study concludes that alcohol impairs the efficiency of perceptual analysis and decision-making processes, rather than simply altering response criteria, and that these effects are distinct from the benefits gained through practice.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | OpenAlex-citations | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-19 |
| archive | success | unpaywall | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-25 |
| extract | success | pdftotext | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| enrich | failed | — | — | — | 4 | 2026-06-26 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-19 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-26 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.
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- Empirical Findings: behavioral performance data