On the Need to Improve the Way Individual Differences in Cognitive Function Are Measured With Reaction Time Tasks

Abstract

The measurement of individual differences in specific cognitive functions has been an important area of study for decades. Often the goal of such studies is to determine whether there are cognitive deficits or enhancements associated with, for example, a specific population, psychological disorder, health status, or age group. The inherent difficulty, however, is that most cognitive functions are not directly observable, so researchers rely on indirect measures to infer an individual’s functioning. One of the most common approaches is to use a task that is designed to tap into a specific function and to use behavioral measures, such as reaction times (RTs), to assess performance on that task. Although this approach is widespread, it unfortunately is subject to a problem of reverse inference: Differences in a given cognitive function can be manifest as differences in RTs, but that does not guarantee that differences in RTs imply differences in that cognitive function. We illustrate this inference problem with data from a study on aging and lexical processing, highlighting how RTs can lead to erroneous conclusions about processing. Then we discuss how employing choice-RT models to analyze data can improve inference and highlight practical approaches to improving the models and incorporating them into one’s analysis pipeline.