The present study investigated the effects of presentation schedule and interstimulus interval duration in a serial choice reaction-time task. 45 Ss were randomly assigned to fixed, patterned, and random schedules having durations of interstimulus intervals of 2, 3, and 4 sec. As the regularity of the presentation schedule decreased, reaction time increased. For fixed-interval presentation, reaction time increased as a function of duration while the quickest reaction times occurred at the mean interstimulus interval for random-interval presentation. Reaction times remained the same under the patterned-interval presentation schedule.
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