1 Also known as Hick-Hyman Law.
2 The seminal work on Hick’s Law is “On the Rate of Gain of Information” by W. E. Hick, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1952, vol. 4, p. 11–26; and “Stimulus information as a determinant of reaction time” by Ray Hyman, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1953, vol. 45, p. 188–196.
3 The Hick’s Law equation is RT = a + b log2 (n), where RT = response time, a = the total time that is not involved with decision making, b = an empirically derived constant based on the cognitive processing time for each option (in this case ≈ 0.155 seconds for humans), n = number of equally probable alternatives. For example, assume it takes 2 seconds to detect an alarm and understand it’s meaning. Further, assume that ...
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