By comparing reaction times across different tasks, Donders was able to conclude how long the mind needs to perform a certain cognitive task. Donders interpreted the difference in reaction times between the simple and the choice conditions of his experiment as indicating how long it took to ______.

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In this question, we’re examining Donders’ method for inferring the duration of mental processes from reaction times across tasks. The setup compares a simple reaction task to a choice reaction task, and the key idea is to attribute the extra time in the more complex task to the additional cognitive stage required.

Option 1: 'perceive the stimulus' — Perception is an early sensory stage, typically assumed to be present in both tasks. If perception took longer in one task, that would show up as part of the overall slower time, but Donders’ subtractive approach attributes the extra time specifically to the extra decision process, not basic perception.

Option 2: 'process the stimulus' — Processing the stimulus could refer to several early perceptual operations. The subtractive method targets the additional stage that differentiates tasks, not general stimulus processing that would be common to both conditions. Therefore this option misidentifies the added stage responsible for the time difference.

Option 3: 'make a decision about the stimulus' — This corresponds exactly to the extra stage introduced in the choice task: deciding which response to give based on the stimulus. The reaction-time difference between simple and choice conditions is interpreted as the time needed for the decision, i.e., the cognitive operation of selecting a response.

Option 4: 'attend to the stimulus' — Attention is a broad process that could influence processing, but in Donders’ framework the specific extra time is assigned to the decision process required to select a response, not to a separate attention operation. The classic interpretation ties the difference to decision making rather than attentional allocation.

Overall, the reasoning hinges on the subtractive method: the extra time seen in the more demanding task is attributed to the additional cognitive stage that is unique to that task, which in this context is the decision about which response to make. Each incorrect option misallocates the extra time to a preceding or alternative stage rather than the decisive step distinguishing simple from choice tasks.

By comparing reaction times across different tasks, Donders was able to conclude how long the mind needs to perform a certain cognitive task. Donders interpreted the difference in reaction times between the simple and the choice conditions of his experiment as indicating how long it took to ______.

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