Reaction times of younger and older men and temporal contingencies of reinforcement.
A visible countdown makes adults press faster, and the speed lasts after the clock is gone.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers asked younger and older men to press a key as soon as a light came on.
They paid the men on a chained VI schedule, but only if the press happened before a shrinking time limit.
The team kept cutting the limit to see if reaction times would keep up.
What they found
Both age groups pressed faster each time the limit got tighter.
When the deadline was removed, the quick speed stuck around.
The gains did not fade, showing a lasting change.
How this fits with other research
Kendrick et al. (1981) showed that telling adults to finish fast shortens pauses on fixed-interval schedules.
Bowe et al. (1983) moves that idea from pauses to finger speed, proving deadlines can push motor times too.
Ghosn et al. (2023) later copied the reaction-time part with autistic youth and found rewards also speed their clicks.
Together the three papers say: give people a clear time reason to move, and they move faster, no matter age or diagnosis.
Why it matters
If a client stalls during tabletop or computer tasks, add a brief countdown.
A 3-second window to touch, sort, or speak can cut dawdling without extra tokens.
Try removing the clock later; the quick pace may stay, saving you from endless prompts.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Influences of extended training and temporal contingencies on reaction time were studied in relation to developmental differences. Older and younger men were trained on a chained schedule in which completion of a variable interval produced a terminal link in which reaction time was measured. The reaction-time procedure involved a conditional discrimination with matching to sample in one component and oddity matching in the other. During baseline training, no time limit was placed on the response to the discrimination choice stimuli. Subsequently, increasingly severe time limits were imposed over a series of sessions. Older and younger men showed increased speeds (decreased reaction times) when temporal contingencies were imposed, and these changes were maintained during post-training baseline sessions when there was unlimited time in which to respond. The younger men generally responded faster than the older ones, and age differences were not appreciably reduced during the course of the experiment. The results indicated the feasibility of studying reaction time in human subjects using operant procedures analogous to those developed for the study of nonverbal organisms.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1983 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1983.40-275