Psychomotor Vigilance Task
Dr. Dinges created and validated the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT), which is among the most widely used assays for behavioral alertness relative to sleep and circadian dynamics biology. It is a simple reaction time task that provides stimuli at intervals between two and ten seconds, requiring the subject to respond by hitting a key as quickly as possible, which clears the screen and begins the wait for the next stimulus. As a noninvasive, accessible method of evaluating alertness and vigilance during sleep loss, the PVT has become the gold standard for assessing the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition. It been validated in bout durations as brief as three minutes (PVT-B), where longer administrations of ten or more minutes would be impractical, such as the International Space Station and during space missions, where astronauts perform the task before conducting strenuous tasks such as extravehicular activities (EVAs).
Read more about the development of the PVT here:
is the (Dinges and Powell, 1985), a 10-min simple RT test that repeatedly presents a visual cue at pseudo-random intervals ranging from 2 to 10 s. At each cue presentation, the subject simply presses a button as quickly as possible to register a response, clear the stimulus and start the next trial. The PVT is exquisitely sensitive to the slowing of RT and increased attentional lapses that occur during periods of total sleep deprivation (Doran et al., 2001) or chronic sleep restriction (Dinges et al., 1997). The PVT has become the ‘gold standard’ for assessment of the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition because it is highly reliable, sensitive to prolonged wakefulness and circadian influences, and shows very little effect of learning (Dinges et al., 1997; Van Dongen et al., 2003), making it ideal for repeated administrations over the course of a lengthy study.
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