Millisecond precision psychological research in a world of commodity computers: new hardware, new problems?
Since the publication of Plant, Hammond, and Turner (2004), which highlighted a pressing need for researchers to pay more attention to sources of error in computer-based experiments, the landscape has undoubtedly changed, but not necessarily for the better. Readily available hardware has improved in terms of raw speed; multi core processors abound; graphics cards now have hundreds of megabytes of RAM; main memory is measured in gigabytes; drive space is measured in terabytes; ever larger thin film transistor displays capable of single-digit response times, together with newer Digital Light Processing multimedia projectors, enable much greater graphic complexity; and new 64-bit operating systems, such as Microsoft Vista, are now commonplace. However, have millisecond-accurate presentation and response timing improved, and will they ever be available in commodity computers and peripherals? In the present article, we used a Black Box ToolKit to measure the variability in timing characteristics of hardware used commonly in psychological research.
Plant
Richard R
RR
Department of Psychology, University of York, York, England. r.plant@psych.york.ac.uk
Turner
Garry
G
D035841:Behavioral Research / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003196:Computer Graphics / Q000295:instrumentation; D003201:Computers / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012107:Research Design / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012984:Software