Tatjana Stadnitski, University of Ulm, Germany

Abstract: Numerous empirical studies identified fractal noise in human behavior. According to the theory of Self Organized Criticality, long memory 1/f scaling is a signature of stable and adaptive complex dynamical systems. This article discusses the following aspects of fractality research: (a) generation of fractal noise in simulation studies; (b) quality of some popular estimators of fractal parameters; (c) measurement artifacts in cognitive performances. 36 time series obtained in response tasks experiments under three different task conditions serve as empirical basis.

Keywords: fractal, 1/f noise, ARFIMA, long memory, cognitive performance, response time