User talk:Kwajoe

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Reaction time (RT) is the elapsed time between the presentation of a sensory stimulus and the subsequent behavioral response. RT is often used in experimental psychology to measure the duration of mental operations, known as mental chronometry. The behavioral response is often a button press but can also be an eye movement, a vocal response, or some other observable behavior.

Reaction time is the time discrepancy between the moment of change in the environment and the beginning of your response. Fingertip reaction time is tested by dropping a ruler between the outstretched fingers of the subject without warning. The distance fallen can be used to determine the time to react to the event.

You might ask why some people just have a higher reaction time than others. First, you must understand how you, as a person, reacts to a change in the environment. For instance, when the subject saw the experimenter drop the ruler, it took some time for the brain to realize that the ruler was being dropped. (That's why you need a friend, you can't just drop the ruler yourself and catch it and assume that you have such a high reaction time!)

Generally speaking, your nervous system is divided into two parts with a central nervous system (consisting of the brain and the spinal cord) and a peripheral nervous system (composed of all the nerves that deliver messages to the spinal cord). Both parts are at work here. First, the nervous system must recognize a stimulus (the ruler being dropped), then cells in the nervous system called neurons relay the message to the brain, muscles and other nerves. Now the peripheral nerve comes into play: the message travels from the brain to the spinal cord and is finally delivered to your fingers. The motor neurons tell the muscles to catch the ruler.

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