The Forced-Response Method: A New Chronometric Approach to Measure Conflict Processing

Despite long-standing concerns about the use of free reaction times (RTs) in cognitive psychology, they remain a prevalent measure of conflict resolution. This report presents the forced-response method as a fresh approach to examine speed-accuracy tradeoff functions (SATs) in conflict tasks. The method involves fixing the overall response time, varying the onset of stimuli, and observing response expression. We applied this method to an arrow flanker task. By systematically varying the time between stimulus onset and response, we reveal a comprehensive time course of the flanker interference effect that is rarely observed in previous literature. We further show that influential manipulations observed in free-RT paradigms similarly affect accuracy within the forced-response technique, suggesting that the forced-response method retains the core cognitive processing characteristics of traditional free-RT conflict tasks. As a behavioral method that examines the time course of cognitive processing, the forced-response method provides a novel and more nuanced look into the dynamics of conflict resolution.