Now we could answer the question, “How long _does_ it take people to
detect 1.2 seconds of delay?” As you can see from _the table opposite_,
the times ranged all the way from 20 seconds to over 10 minutes, and, in
two cases delay was not detected at all. The results in the table are
also shown in _the histogram on the next page_, which depicts how
broadly the detection times were distributed. To me, one of the most
interesting things is that even people who were able to detect delay
quickly sometimes did _not_ detect it for a couple of minutes. For
example, the pair K/G had two times under a minute, one of 143 seconds,
and one of 421 seconds. I interpret their two short times to mean that
they knew what to look for, since they made no incorrect responses while
delay was not present. However, their long times seem to mean that they
sometimes didn’t notice delay for quite a while. Incidentally, only two
responses were made during the total of about 40 minutes when I did not
introduce delay, and these “false alarms” were by two of the fastest
pairs at true detection—F/K and S/H.
Length of Time Before Seven Pairs of Talkers Could Detect 1.2 Seconds of
Delay