More overlap trials were presented because these trials are less likely to yield valid reaction times (infants may look away or become stuck on the central fixation), especially in atypical infants.
In later text, this variable will be referred to as attentional control, and was calculated using the difference between invalid and valid trials' reaction times in correct trials.
Subjects' detection performance on invalid trials was significantly lower than on valid trials, with reaction time distributions that were nearly or completely indistinguishable from those predicted from a random response hypothesis, indicating that cue instruction was used by the subjects to orient their attention [21].
Analyses of cue validity effects (neutral reaction time [RT] – valid RT) showed that control groups used the cues strategically to boost search.
For an arbitrarily chosen initial distribution the continuous rate equation is approximately solved, by assuming a Schulz-Flory distribution with time-dependent parameters to be valid during the whole reaction time.
The ANOVA has revealed a significant interaction ISI x validity (F 2,36) = 5.47, p = 0.008) with a difference in reaction time between valid and invalid trials occurred for the ISI of 150 ms (p = 0.0009, Newman-Keuls post hoc test).
Importantly, the degree of deficit in patients (e.g., a mean 40 ms slowing of reaction time to valid cues in the precued reaction time task) is much less than that reported in previous studies of malingered poor performance [ 14].
Cuing effects are reported as the difference in reaction time between the valid and invalid trials aggregated for each subject.
The TOVA test may be repeated many times and remains a valid indicator of attention span and reaction time because there is no learning experience with this test.
Anticipated trials were discarded from the analysis of reaction time but were considered valid for computing the distributions of relative frequencies.
Saccadic reaction time data were analyzed for valid trials where the infant oriented toward the peripheral target after 100 to 1200 milliseconds of its appearance.
