Suppose a target appears and you must move a mouse cursor to it. There is first a period where you perceive the target and prepare the movement. Then there is a movement phase where the cursor travels to the target.
In many motor-control contexts, the first interval is called reaction time and the second is called movement time. Their sum can be described as total response time or task-completion time.
If your finger is already resting on the mouse button and the only instruction is “click when green,” there is almost no aiming movement. The recorded browser interval is therefore close to stimulus-to-click response latency.
It still includes the physical button action and hardware/software delay, so even this narrow number is not a pure neural conduction measurement.
When a target appears at a new location, you must detect it, choose or plan a movement, move the pointer or finger and successfully select the target. Target size and distance affect the movement component.
This is why an Aim score should not be compared directly with a Classic score. One deliberately includes target acquisition while the other tries to minimize it.
Everyday writing often treats “reaction time” and “response time” as synonyms. Human-computer interaction, psychology, sport science and engineering may define them differently depending on what is being measured.
Reaction Lab uses “reaction time” as the familiar user-facing term for stimulus-to-input latency in its reaction modes. Aim and moving-target modes are broader performance tasks because movement and accuracy are integral to the result.
The Stats dashboard is most useful when you compare the same mode over time rather than combining unlike tasks.
They are often used interchangeably in everyday language, but some research separates reaction time from subsequent movement time.
Partly, but it also measures movement/target acquisition and accuracy.
For reaction modes, it timestamps the interval between the browser’s go event and your registered input. Hardware latency remains part of the result.