Vadillo, Miguel A.Garaizar, Pablo2026-03-172026-03-172016-03-31Vadillo, M. A., & Garaizar, P. (2016). The effect of noise-induced variance on parameter recovery from reaction times. BMC Bioinformatics, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/S12859-016-0993-X10.1186/S12859-016-0993-Xhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14454/5496Background: Technical noise can compromise the precision and accuracy of the reaction times collected in psychological experiments, especially in the case of Internet-based studies. Although this noise seems to have only a small impact on traditional statistical analyses, its effects on model fit to reaction-time distributions remains unexplored. Results: Across four simulations we study the impact of technical noise on parameter recovery from data generated from an ex-Gaussian distribution and from a Ratcliff Diffusion Model. Our results suggest that the impact of noise-induced variance tends to be limited to specific parameters and conditions. Conclusions: Although we encourage researchers to adopt all measures to reduce the impact of noise on reaction-time experiments, we conclude that the typical amount of noise-induced variance found in these experiments does not pose substantial problems for statistical analyses based on model fitting.eng© 2016 Vadillo and GaraizarEx-Gaussian distributionInternet-based experimentsModel fittingPsychological experimentsRatcliff Diffusion ModelReaction timejournal article2026-03-171471-2105