A theory of power laws in human reaction times: insights from an information-processing approach Medina, José M. Díaz Navas, José Antonio Norwich, Kenneth H. Human reaction time Pieron's law Intrinsic variability Power laws Information transfer Human reaction time (RT) can be defined as the time elapsed from stimulus presentation until a reaction/response occurs (e.g., manual, verbal, saccadic, etc.). RT has been a fundamental measure of the sensory-motor latency at suprathreshold conditions for more than a century and is one of the hallmarks of human performance in everyday tasks (Luce, 1986; Meyer et al., 1988). Some examples are the measurement of RTs in sports science, driving safety or in aging. Under repeated experimental conditions the RT is not a constant value but fluctuates irregularly over time. Stochastic fluctuations of RTs are considered a benchmark for modeling neural latency mechanisms at a macroscopic scale (Luce, 1986; Smith and Ratcliff, 2004). Power-law behavior has been reported in at least three major types of experiments. 2014-09-18T07:37:54Z 2014-09-18T07:37:54Z 2014 journal article Medina, J.M.; Díaz, J.A.; Norwich, K.H. A theory of power laws in human reaction times: insights from an information-processing approach. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8: 621 (2014). [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/33073] 1662-5161 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/33073 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00621 eng open access Frontiers Foundation