I am planning on running a study that will measure response latencies using a joystick. Can I use any type of joystick? Would you recommend any particular brand/type of joystick to ensure the most accurate latency measures?
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To be honest, we've never done any testing to determine the latency of various joysticks.

I would suspect, however, that the shortest latencies would be realized when using an old-style joystick which plugs in to the computer's Game port. While this port isn't as common as it once was (15 pins in two rows in a D-shaped shell), it's still around if you look hard.

I'd suspect that USB joysticks would take more time to convert the position signal to a USB data stream, then extract it for use by various programs.

- John