Exploring Reaction Times of Children Using Psychomotor Vigilance Test

Undergraduate #255
Discipline: Mathematics and Statistics
Subcategory: Mathematics and Statistics

Isaac Wright - Savannah State University

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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.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): The Ohio State University

Faculty Advisor: Eloise Kaizar, Janet Best,