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Accession Number:
ADA580600
Title:
A New Metric for Quantifying Performance Impairment on the Psychomotor Vigilance Test
Descriptive Note:
Journal article
Corporate Author:
ARMY MEDICAL RESEARCH AND MATERIEL COMMAND FORT DETRICK MD TELEMEDICINE AND ADVANCED TECH RESEARCH CENTER
Report Date:
2012-01-01
Pagination or Media Count:
17.0
Abstract:
We have developed a new psychomotor vigilance test PVT metric for quantifying the effects of sleep loss on performance impairment. The new metric quantifies performance impairment by estimating the probability density of response times RTs in a PVT session, and then considering deviations of the density relative to that of a baseline-session density. Results from a controlled laboratory study involving 12 healthy adults subjected to 85 h of extended wakefulness, followed by 12 h of recovery sleep, revealed that the group performance variability based on the new metric remained relatively uniform throughout wakefulness. In contrast, the variability of PVT lapses, mean RT, median RT and to a lesser extent mean speed showed strong time-of-day effects, with the PVT lapse variability changing with time of day depending on the selected threshold. Our analysis suggests that the new metric captures more effectively the homeostatic and circadian process underlying sleep regulation than the other metrics, both directly in terms of larger effect sizes 4-61 larger and indirectly through improved fits to the two-process model 9-67 larger coefficient of determination. Although the trend of the mean speed results followed those of the new metric, we found that mean speed yields significantly smaller 50 intersubject performance variance than the other metrics. Based on these findings, and that the new metric considers performance changes based on the entire set of responses relative to a baseline, we conclude that it provides a number of potential advantages over the traditional PVT metrics.
Distribution Statement:
APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE
