Fatigue assessment in the field: validation of a hand-held electronic psychomotor vigilance task.
BACKGROUND
In recent years, there has been an increasing need for a reliable and practical tool for assessing fatigue-related impairment in the field. This study investigated the sensitivity of one potential tool, a 5-min version of the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) specifically designed for use on personal digital assistants (PDA), to 28 h of sustained wakefulness.


METHODS
There were 15 participants who slept in the laboratory overnight then remained awake from 08:00 (Day 1) to 12:00 (Day 2). During every second hour, they completed a 10-min PVT, a sustained attention task that is sensitive to the effects of sleep loss and fatigue, and a 5-min PDA-PVT.


RESULTS
While performance on both tasks significantly varied as a function of hours of wakefulness, responses on the PDA-PVT were typically slower than on the PVT. When performance scores were standardized, the negative impact of increasing hours of wakefulness on performance on the 5-min PDA-PVT and 10-min PVT did not significantly differ.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings suggest that the 5-min PDA-PVT may provide a reasonable substitute for the 10-min PVT, particularly in circumstances where a shorter test is required and/or the standard PVT is not as practical.
Lamond
Nicole
N
The Centre for Sleep Research, The University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia. nicole.lamond@unisa.edu.au
Dawson
Drew
D
Roach
Gregory D
GD
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000337:Aerospace Medicine / Q000295:instrumentation*; D018480:Astronauts / Q000145:classification; D034201:Computers, Handheld; D005221:Fatigue / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014851:Wakefulness