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Using Response Times To Measure Ability On A Cognitive Task, Aleksandr Alekseev
Using Response Times To Measure Ability On A Cognitive Task, Aleksandr Alekseev
ESI Working Papers
I show how using response times as a proxy for effort coupled with an explicit process-based model can address a long-standing issue of how to separate the effect of cognitive ability on performance from the effect of motivation. My method is based on a dynamic stochastic model of optimal effort choice in which ability and motivation are the structural parameters. I show how to estimate these parameters from the data on outcomes and response times in a cognitive task. In a laboratory experiment, I find that performance on a Digit-Symbol test is a noisy and biased measure of cognitive ability. …