Original Research Article
Year: 2019 | Month: June | Volume: 6 | Issue: 6 | Pages: 337-340
Comparative Study of Simple and Choice Visual Reaction Time in Young Adults
Ovais Karnain Wadoo1, Sheikh Imran Syeed2
1Senior Resident, Department of physiology, GMC Srinagar
2Professor & Head, Department of physiology, GMC Srinagar
Corresponding Author: Ovais Karnain Wadoo
ABSTRACT
Background: Reaction time is defined as interval of time between presentation of stimulus and appearance of appropriate voluntary response in a subject. It is usually expressed in milliseconds. Reaction time is very important for our everyday lives and needs intact sensory system, cognitive processing, and motor performance. Reaction time is a good indicator of sensorimotor coordination and performance of an individual. Reaction time determines the alertness of a person. There are 3 different types of reaction time experiments, simple, recognition, and choice reaction time experiments. In simple reaction time experiments, there is only one stimulus and one response. In recognition reaction time experiments, there are some stimuli (the “memory set”) that should be responded to and others (the “distracter set”) that should not be responded to. In choice reaction time experiments, there are multiple stimuli and multiple responses and subject must give a response that corresponds to the stimulus.
Aim: The aim of our study was to compare the simple and choice visual reaction time of 1st year medical students of our college.
Material and Method: The present study was undertaken on 100 subjects consisting of equal number of males and females. The tests were done using Deary-Liewald Reaction time software version 310. All the subjects were thoroughly acquainted with the procedure and practice trial was given to every subject before taking the test.A comparison was made between simple visual reaction time (VRT) and choice visual reaction time (CRT).
Results: The present study was undertaken on 100 students. The Mean±SD of VRT was 252.99±17.53while as Mean±SD of CRT was 368.91±18.82. Paired T-test was done to know the significance. The statistical analysis of the results show that there is highly significant difference (P<0.0001) between the two and the VRT is faster than the CRT.
Conclusion: From our study we conclude that Simple visual reaction time (VRT) is shorter than choice reaction time in healthy young adult subjects. The cause of CRT being slower than VRT may be due to processing time required in CRT.
Key words: Simple reaction time, Simple visual reaction time, Choice reaction time, Deary-Liewald.
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