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Updated: Jul 17, 2026

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues
Published on: June 3, 2013
1/f noise in human cognition: is it ubiquitous, and what does it mean?
Simon Farrell1, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Roger Ratcliff
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 12a Priory Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1TU, England. simon.farrell@bristol.ac.uk
Abstract:
Researchers in psychology are paying increasing attention to temporal correlations in performance on cognitive tasks. Recently, Thornton and Gilden (2005) introduced a spectral method for analyzing psychological time series; in particular, this method is tailored to distinguish transient serial correlations from the persistent correlations characterized by 1/f noise. Thornton and Gilden applied their method to word-naming data to support the claimed ubiquity of 1/f noise in psychological time series. We argue that a previously presented method for distinguishing transient and persistent correlations (e.g., Wagenmakers, Farrell, and Ratcliff, 2004) compares favorably with the new method presented by Thornton and Gilden. We apply Thornton and Gilden's method to time series from a range of cognitive tasks and show that 1/f noise is not a ubiquitous property of psychological time series. Finally, we assess the theoretical developments in this area and argue that the development of well-specified models of the principles or mechanisms of human cognition giving rise to 1/f noise is long overdue.
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