title: Preliminary validation study of the 3-min wrist-worn psychomotor vigilance test.
abstract: The 10-min psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) is a widely used tool to assess behavioral alertness. In operational environments, however, the 3-min version of the PVT is more practicable. Under controlled laboratory conditions, we compared performance on the 3-min PVT on a wrist-worn device with the 3-min PVT on a laptop computer. We conducted two repeated measures experiments (72 participants) to assess the effects of PVT device type (laptop or wrist-worn), backlight on the wrist-worn device (on or off), ambient light (low or normal levels), and interstimulus interval (ISI). First, we compared the wrist-worn PVT (ISI of 2-10 s) with the laptop-based PVT (ISI of 1-4 s). Participants performed six PVT trials counterbalanced for order of ambient light and device type. In both ambient-lighting conditions, the median differences in PVT metrics (reaction time, response speed, and percentage of 355-ms or 500-ms lapses combined with false starts) between the laptop and the wrist-worn PVT with the backlight on were less than 4.5 %. Specifically, the median difference in reaction times was less than 10 ms. However, the standard deviation in most metrics using the wrist-worn PVT was twice that of the laptop. In a second experiment, we compared the wrist-worn and laptop PVTs with the same ISIs (1-4 s) in normal light conditions. The results suggest that PVT data can be collected reliably in the field using the wrist-worn device with the backlight on and an ISI of 2-10 s.
authors: Operations Research Department, Naval Postgraduate School, 1411 Cunningham Drive, Monterey, CA, 93943, USA. pmatsang@nps.edu.
authors: Panagiotis
authors: P
authors: Matsangas
authors: Operations Research Department, Naval Postgraduate School, 1411 Cunningham Drive, Monterey, CA, 93943, USA.
authors: Nita Lewis
authors: NL
authors: Shattuck
authors: Operations Research Department, Naval Postgraduate School, 1411 Cunningham Drive, Monterey, CA, 93943, USA.
authors: Stephanie
authors: S
authors: Brown
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D003625:Data Collection / Q000295:instrumentation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008838:Microcomputers; D018670:Monitoring, Ambulatory / Q000295:instrumentation*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D014953:Wrist; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Field data collection; Psychomotor vigilance task; Reaction time