Mahurin R K, Pirozzolo F J
Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio 78284.
Percept Mot Skills. 1993 Aug;77(1):107-13. doi: 10.2466/pms.1993.77.1.107.
Reaction time in normal subjects is known to increase in a log-linear fashion relative to the number of alternative choices. However, this relationship (formalized as "Hick's law") has received limited investigation in populations with neurological cognitive impairment. The present study used timed sorting of standard playing cards to test Hick's law for 20 young control subjects, and 20 each of age-matched elderly subjects with Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, and no cognitive abnormalities. Although Parkinson patients were slowest in the simple tasks of dealing out the cards and sorting by color, Alzheimer patients showed the greatest slowing for the more cognitively complex conditions of sorting by suit and rank of the cards. The performance of all four groups followed Hick's law in displaying a significant linear relationship between response time and log2 of the number of choices. These findings suggest that, although limitations of information-processing speed in Alzheimer and Parkinson disease affected choice response time, there may be sparing of fundamental cognitive organization in these disorders.
已知正常受试者的反应时间相对于备选选择的数量呈对数线性增加。然而，这种关系（形式化为“希克定律”）在患有神经认知障碍的人群中受到的研究有限。本研究使用标准扑克牌的定时分类来测试20名年轻对照受试者以及20名年龄匹配的患有阿尔茨海默病、帕金森病且无认知异常的老年受试者的希克定律。尽管帕金森病患者在发牌和按颜色分类的简单任务中速度最慢，但在按花色和牌面等级进行更具认知复杂性的分类条件下，阿尔茨海默病患者表现出最大程度的反应减慢。所有四组的表现均遵循希克定律，即反应时间与选择数量的log2之间呈现出显著的线性关系。这些发现表明，尽管阿尔茨海默病和帕金森病中信息处理速度的限制会影响选择反应时间，但在这些疾病中基本认知组织可能未受影响。
