DOTA 2 MMR and Complex Reaction Time

Well, first of all, I'd like to thank all the people who spent the time to take these tests and tell me their results. I've wanted to do this for a while and I appreciate your help. I'm also really sorry that I couldn't do something more informative with it. Welp, on to what I actually was able to do.

I have compiled the data into five graphs and one table: Go-No/Go Reaction Time by MMR

Go-No/Go Reaction Time by Skill Group

Eriksen Reaction Times by MMR

Eriksen Incongruent RT by Skill Group

[Eriksen Congruent RT by Skill] Group(http://i.imgur.com/IUwwGua.png)

RT Range by Skill Group

Skill Group Go/No-Go RT Congruent RT Incongruent RT
Normal 298ms 204ms 336ms
High 323ms 160ms 285ms
Very High 333ms 200ms 216ms

I have linear correlations between each measure and MMR for both scatterplots on the graph, but since it may be hard to read I shall list them here as well:

Go-No/Go: R² = 0.1042 Eriksen Congruent: R² = 0.1497 Eriksen Incongruent: R² = 0.0762

The first things you'll notice are that the sample size was fairly small and very top heavy with the 'very high skill' group making up around half of the respondents to the survey. This, of course, indicates that those who took the test were likely already fairly good at DotA and the respondents may even be further selected to those who were good at both DotA and the tests. Despite this, however, there is still a very slight, but noticeable, downward trend in both the plot and bar graphs in reaction times as MMR increased increased.

In retrospect, I could probably, especially with the Eriksen tests, have thrown out 3-4 of the outliers to see if I could get a stronger correlation but I think it was safer this way. As far as the correlation strengths themselves went, Congruent RT had the strongest correlation, followed by No-Go, with incongruent being the weakest of the three. I found this very surprising as I would have expected the ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli to make a decision would actually prove to be the most important of the traits but apparently not in this case. I do wonder if the combined weighted averages would have made for stronger, possibly more significant, correlation but I wasn't clear in my request so I didn't receive very many reports for it. I do think it's worth mentioning, however, that what I did receive showed, once again, something of a decline with rising MMR.

The slopes' steepness, however, declined from No-Go, to incongruent to congruent. I'm not really sure what to make of this to be honest. I'd welcome any speculation that anyone has for what this could possibly mean.

In conclusion, nothing can really be extrapolated from my survey. the sample is too non-representative, the r2 s, the strongest barely accounting for even 2.3% of the variance in MMR, is tiny and the statistical significance is unknown and even if it wasn't, it likely wouldn't reach it. In fact, I likely wouldn't have even posted this but I think the people who participated deserve to see something for their efforts.

Speculation time. I wonder if, while not necessarily determinant of MMR, reaction time variance would decrease as MMR increased. I kind of imagine that as ability caps out, every advantage would start to matter leaving those with poorer times with lower caps. I also wonder variance would stabilize if responses were controlled for number of games played or time playing DotA once again showing if reaction times could contribute to a something of a cap in DotA playing ability.

tl;dr: Sample was small and non-representative. All Reaction Times decreased as MMR rose. All correlations were weak. Extrapolation is untenable. Practice and game knowledge seem to win again.

/r/DotA2 Thread