Task modulation of the effects of brightness on reaction time and response force

Van der Molen and Keuss [van der Molen, M.W., Keuss, P.J.G., 1979. The relationship between reaction time and intensity in discrete auditory tasks. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 31, 95-102; van der Molen, M.W., Keuss, P.J.G., 1981. Response selection and the processing of auditory intensity. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 33, 177-184] showed that paradoxically long reaction times (RT) occur with extremely loud auditory stimuli when the task is difficult (e.g. needs a response choice). It was argued that this paradoxical behavior of RT is due to active suppression of response prompting to prevent false responses. In the present experiments, we demonstrated that such an effect can also occur for visual stimuli provided that they are large enough. Additionally, we showed that response force exerted by participants on response keys monotonically grew with intensity for large stimuli but was independent of intensity for small visual stimuli. Bearing in mind that only large stimuli are believed to be arousing this pattern of results supports the arousal interpretation of the negative effect of loud stimuli on RT given by van der Molen and Keuss.