The remarkable unity found in the high‐field behavior of thin‐film amorphous chalcogenides is illustrated by comparing pulse data ranging from nanosecond to millisecond duration. Sixteen long‐pulse effects had earlier been described in detail by coupled carrier theory, which postulates one lower‐energy carrier, localized by hopping or trapping below a band, and one higher‐energy carrier, which is free within a band to ionize the localized carrier. Twelve new tests of this theory against short‐pulse data are given in four materials and without the use of adjustable parameters. Very substantial agreement is found in both calculated magnitudes and in predicted functional dependences. The use of short pulses in unswitched materials renders joule heating negligible in all tests of theory against experiments reported here.