These should be able to time to millisecond accuracy. My best result was on the middle one at 0.228, the others were a bit higher at 0.245 and 0.2472
On a cursory glance of the literature people get their best reaction time on average at 24 and it increases by around 2 milliseconds per year of age after that.
However, I have not found any particularly good source of age analysis particularly not anything against the tests.
Ideally a reaction time test should be as simple as a click. As soon as you get move and click you start getting away from the core reaction time. However, some of the above have an obvious move that you can do before the stimulus for the reaction.
The second one is a bit odd on the last test. It may be we should a better test and delete this one.
Fun! My average was 0.28 for the U Washington test with little variation across measures or using keyboard or mouse. According to the general guideline you found, that is OK for late 70’s.
I found this table from a Canadian school test. It seems very different but the test method was not specified.
The test won’t be accurate for those using a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse because of the communication latency. The Bluetooth latency can add 1 - 20 ms to your time depending on the quality of your Bluetooth mouse or keyboard.
Agreed if comparing with the initial tests posted. Because of the source, I suspect their values are correct but are based on a different test methodology. See the article I posted immediately after that for a much better analysis, including the parameters of change related to aging.
I just tried the other tests. They appear to be coded differently. I get a stable pattern on each the distribution of which is significantly different between test types.
@AnUser If you are aware of a methodological standard, will you post it. Based on my review of a handful of research papers, the relative times (by age, gender, etc.) are what is studied and the specific methodologies are designed to explore different psychoneuro motor dimensions. I found other papers where the ranges were in the half second area. The three we began with at the top of this thread were just for fun – games – and not standardized. As one example, the one that had a very small 'Stop" box might not be expected to be comparable to the one where you could click the mouse anywhere or strike any key. Further complications in addition to bluetooth latency as mentioned by @desertshores are keyboard interrupt cycles (should be minor on most modern CPUs), and latency known to vary by OS (WIndows, iOS, Linux). I think all of these parameters are standardized in a research protocol. When I took a federal government reaction time test many years ago, they created a new norm table for each device configuration.
That’s my point, I looked that up it’s just a website. I don’t understand why reaction time would differ between different methods so much. You’re measuring the time it takes to react to something.
The reason you will never have an accurate measurement is that you will never know your system latency. It can be done, but not easily for the average person.
Mechanical travel distance and the type of keyboard sensor can also affect latency.
The most accurate results will be with a wired keyboard and mouse.
You may be able to find your keyboard and mouse on this site and get a fairly accurate latency number.
