Psychomotor Vigilance Test - discussion and testing

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Bio-signals Collecting System for Fatigue Level Classification, 2023, Younggun Lee et al

I've just tried it. This is what it said:

Test Duration= 120 seconds

Number of false starts= 0

Average response time= 367 msec over 26 attempts.

Your results show that your alertness may be suboptimal. Consider medical evaluation.

 

Response time av 589. Not surprisingly as PEM today following dentist appointment yesterday and I didn’t go to sleep til 9 am

I got the same message about suboptimal alertness.

eta I will try to remember to give it a go on a non PEM day

 

Result today: Average response time 459 msec over 26 attempts. Test taken about an hour after having a shower with hair washing, which exhausts me.

 

I thought about adding a poll, but it's hard to allow on a single list of options for all the possible variations in different factors like time of day, severity level, whether in PEM or not, and scores on the test.
So let's just each do our own record keeping if we're interested, and post here if we want to share our results.

 

I was doing it with a mouse, not a touchscreen. I guess that makes a difference. I'll try it sometime with a touchscreen to see if it works for me.

 

Just tried it on my phone:
average 1068 over 23 attempts.
Not only did it not register a few times so I needed to touch the screen again, but it also more or less doubled the time from when I touched to when it registered. You can see it counting off in milliseconds, so it was obvious.
I think the answer is, use a mouse. It registered the time much faster.

So my touchscreen phone more than doubled the times on my laptop with old fashioned wired mouse.

 

Agreed. It's probably mainly used in a clinic on the clinic's computer, so they will be able to compare patients as well as track changes in individuals.
I think I'll have a go at tracking mine.
It would still be potentially useful for ME research, I think, including as part of longitudinal studies where patients test regularly at home. But that may mean providing them with reliable equipment to do the test.

 

I reckon it’s only going to be of interest to see if there’s a difference between results when in/ out of PEM for each of us using the same device. Comparing against others probably pointless.

 

I tracked this as part of symptom monitoring for about a month, measuring it in the morning, missing some days, maybe 5 years ago.

For example, my best score was 307. On that day, my morning resting heart rate was 65, my morning shock index (0.7), pulse pressure (36) and POTS standing test (19) were all normal. Morning resting BP was 110 over 68;standing BP increased to 120 over 84. I did a grocery shop that day. The next day was an average day.

My worst score was 459. On that day, my morning resting heart rate was 64, my morning shock index was very abnormal - 1.08. Pulse pressure was very abnormal - 23. The POTS standing test was positive for POTS (41). Morning resting BP was lowish (102 over 63) and it got worse upon standing for 10 minutes (97 over 74). I think all those measures add up to the heart and brain not getting enough blood when I was upright. But - I didn't record it as a PEM day. I did a bit of gardening. The next day was a bad PEM day though.

My second worst score was 431. Morning resting heart rate was 63, morning shock index 0.9 (a bit high), pulse pressure normal (32), POTS positive (35). Morning resting BP was lowish 104/63; standing BP was 106/74. It wasn't a bad day. The next day was an average day.

Looking at the data, I think the reaction speed score correlated loosely with the cardiovascular measures - a slow speed was more likely to go with a positive morning POTS test. PEM and fatigue bad enough to need to be in bed seemed to follow bad cardiovascular and reaction time scores - delayed by a day. But there aren't perfect relationships.

It would be great to have a whole lot of people doing detailed monitoring including the reaction speed test.

 

I had completely forgotten we'd tested it before too. We came to the same conclusion then, that it's designed for a computer with mouse, not a touchscreen.

 

Group ME Moment