Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The reaction time (RT) version of the Perruchet Effect is basedon a concurrent dissociation between RTs to respond andconscious expectancy of the outcome across runs of repeatedtrials. Consequently, the Perruchet Effect is considered strongevidence for multiple learning processes. This conclusion,however, relies on the RT trend being driven by associativelearning rather than, as some have argued, US recency orpriming mechanisms. Recent research examining themechanisms underlying the RT trend do so by examiningmotor activity associated with the response. With this aim inmind, the current study developed, and assessed the usefulnessof, a novel method to measure changes in the amount of forceapplied to the response button in an RT Perruchet paradigm.The results obtained could not be explained by a singlemechanism, but suggest multiple factors underlying the RTversion of the Perruchet effect.