A ballistic model of choice response time
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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

The 5-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task: A Task of Attention and Impulse Control for Rodents
Published on: August 10, 2014
Scott Brown1, Andrew Heathcote
1Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-5100, USA. scottb@uci.edu
Abstract:
Almost all models of response time (RT) use a stochastic accumulation process. To account for the benchmark RT phenomena, researchers have found it necessary to include between-trial variability in the starting point and/or the rate of accumulation, both in linear (R. Ratcliff & J. N. Rouder, 1998) and nonlinear (M. Usher & J. L. McClelland, 2001) models. The authors show that a ballistic (deterministic within-trial) model using a simplified version of M. Usher and J. L. McClelland's (2001) nonlinear accumulation process with between-trial variability in accumulation rate and starting point is capable of accounting for the benchmark behavioral phenomena. The authors successfully fit their model to R. Ratcliff and J. N. Rouder's (1998) data, which exhibit many of the benchmark phenomena.
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