Title: Rtanalyze: a package for reaction time analysis in R

Author: Wouter Weeda

Affiliation: VU University Amsterdam

Abstract: Reaction time experiments are often used in (cognitive)
psychology, ranging from very simple perception tasks to sophisticated
neuropsychological assessments.  The analysis of reaction time data can be
quite cumbersome and requires multiple interdependent steps: data import,
quality control, outlier removal, and analysis.  In addition, given the
diverse nature of reaction time data, these steps must often be adapted by
the researcher to fit their needs.

To streamline the pre-processing and analysis of reaction time data I've
created a package in R. The rtanalyze package allows for easy storage,
manipulation, analysis, and visualisation of reaction time data.  All steps
are applied to the raw data without removing these, therefore allowing to
undo and redo manipulations.  This allows researchers to easily retrace and
document their pre-processing and analysis steps.  Additionally, this
approach has advantages when making data available in a repository: as the
raw data as well as the analysis steps are in the same object, reviewers
can more easily check and visualize the data.  Another advantage, since the
data are stored in S4 objects, is that the package can be easily extended
to allow custom-made analyses (e.g., diffusion model analyses).

In this talk I will give an overview of the rtanalyze package and use an
example dataset from a task-switching experiment to show its capabilities,
from import to analysis.