Psychomotor vigilance task

The Psychomotor Vigilance Task (hereafter ‘PVT’) is a sustained-attention, reaction-timed task that measures the speed with which subjects respond to a visual stimulus. Quantitative dependent variables involve omission and commission errors, reflecting fluctuations in endogenous cognitive condition. Research indicates increased sleepiness correlates with deteriorated alertness, slower problem-solving, declined psycho-motor skills, and increased rate of false responding.

The PVT was championed by David F. Dinges and popularized by its ease of scoring, simple metrics, and convergent validity.[1] It has a learning curve of only 1–3 trials and the 10-minute variant has become a standard laboratory tool for assessing sustained performance. However, it was shown that motivation can counteract the detrimental effects of sleep loss for up to 36 hours.[2]

PVT Overview

The PVT is a simple task where the subject presses a button as soon as the light appears. The light will turn on randomly every few seconds for 5–10 minutes. The main measurement of this task is not to assess the reaction time, but to see how many times the button is not pressed when the light is on. The purpose of the PVT is to measure sustained attention, and give a numerical measure of sleepiness by counting the number of lapses in attention of the tested subject.[3]

See also

References

  1. ^ Dinges, D. I, & Powell, J. W. (1985). Microcomputer analysis of performance on a portable, simple visual RT task sustained operations. Behavioral Research Methods, Instrumentation, and Computers, 17, 652–655.
  2. ^ Loh, Sylvia; Nicole Lamond, Jill Dorrian, Gregory Roach, Drew Dawson (May 2004). "The validity of psychomotor vigilance tasks of less than 10-minute duration.". Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc (University of South Australia, Woodville, Australia) 36 (2): 339–346. doi:10.3758/BF03195580. PMID 15354700. http://www.springerlink.com/content/0036g07845763176/. Retrieved 2011-06-09. 
  3. ^ Walker, M. P. (2009, October 21). *Sleep Deprivation III: Brain consequences – Attention, concentration and real life.* Lecture given in Psychology 133 at the University of California, Berkeley, CA.