TY - JOUR PY - 1989// TI - Narcosis has additive rather than interactive effects on discrimination reaction time JO - Human factors A1 - Porlier, G. A1 - Bhatia, M. A1 - Mitchell, I. A1 - Fowler, Bess SP - 571 EP - 578 VL - 31 IS - 5 N2 - A central feature of the impairment in performance produced by inert gas narcosis, which poses a threat to divers breathing compressed air, is a slowing of reaction time (RT). To investigate the locus of this slowing, the effects of 35% nitrous oxide on Crossman's confusion function were determined using line-length and weight discrimination tasks, with accuracy held constant. For both tasks narcosis slowed RT by increasing the intercept rather than the slope of Crossman's function. These results are interpreted in terms of additive factors method logic as being consistent with the predictions of the slowed processing model that has been proposed to account for the effects of narcosis on human performance. LA - SN - 0018-7208 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -