Exploring Reaction Times of Children Using Psychomotor Vigilance Test
Primary Faculty Mentor’s Name
Dr. Janet Best
Proposal Track
Student
Session Format
Poster
Abstract
Often, children who are in deep sleep do not awaken from alarms typically used in households. In emergencies such as fires when every second is crucial, this can be problematic. When the children are awakened they may experience delayed awareness and reaction times due to sleep inertia. Sleep inertia is the period after awakening in which people may experience confusion, reduced alertness, and slower reaction times. In order to study sleep inertia, we must first know if reaction times are trait-like. The data used in the study was collected using a ten minute Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT). Subjects were given the test before sleep to create a baseline, then were awakened twice during the night to complete the ten minute PVT. Our project aims to understand the underlying trends in reaction times associated with children ages 5 to 12. We hypothesize that reaction times are trait-like across nights. We are also interested in trends in reaction times across age and the duration of the test. Bootstrapping, we created a 95% confidence interval for the night coefficient in our regression model, assuming our null hypothesis is true. From the analysis, we concluded there was enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that PVT results are not trait-like in studies like this one. In addition, we found that baseline speed increases as children age and baseline speed decreases as the PVT progresses.
Keywords
Psychomotor Vigilance Test, Bootstrapping, Sleep Inertia
Location
Concourse and Atrium
Presentation Year
2015
Start Date
11-7-2015 10:10 AM
End Date
11-7-2015 11:20 AM
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Wright, Isaac D., "Exploring Reaction Times of Children Using Psychomotor Vigilance Test" (2015). Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference (2014-2015). 85.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gurc/2015/2015/85
Exploring Reaction Times of Children Using Psychomotor Vigilance Test
Concourse and Atrium
Often, children who are in deep sleep do not awaken from alarms typically used in households. In emergencies such as fires when every second is crucial, this can be problematic. When the children are awakened they may experience delayed awareness and reaction times due to sleep inertia. Sleep inertia is the period after awakening in which people may experience confusion, reduced alertness, and slower reaction times. In order to study sleep inertia, we must first know if reaction times are trait-like. The data used in the study was collected using a ten minute Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT). Subjects were given the test before sleep to create a baseline, then were awakened twice during the night to complete the ten minute PVT. Our project aims to understand the underlying trends in reaction times associated with children ages 5 to 12. We hypothesize that reaction times are trait-like across nights. We are also interested in trends in reaction times across age and the duration of the test. Bootstrapping, we created a 95% confidence interval for the night coefficient in our regression model, assuming our null hypothesis is true. From the analysis, we concluded there was enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that PVT results are not trait-like in studies like this one. In addition, we found that baseline speed increases as children age and baseline speed decreases as the PVT progresses.
