Where is reaction time important

Individuals who do not fulfill required visual field standards have their driving license withdrawn in Sweden. However, understanding of the ability to compensate for this loss is limited. This study aimed to determine if reaction time and cognitive performance are important for safe driving in visual field loss VFL individuals. Visually demanding reaction time tasks of different complexity, for example, can help one understand why some VFL individuals drive as safely as normally sighted individuals.

Twenty VFL individuals and 83 normally sighted individuals participated in a driving simulator experiment and an additional test battery.

The driving task categorized VFL participants into two subgroups: passed or failed. Three reaction time tasks, four cognitive tests, and two meta-cognitive scales were completed. The passed VFL subgroup was faster than the failed subgroup in the context-dependent reaction time task and slower in the context-independent reaction time task.

The passed subgroup performed equally well, or less well, on the cognitive tasks compared to the failed subgroup. The VFL participants performed less well than the normally sighted individuals on most cognitive tasks. However, VFL participants did not reflect on their driving ability in meta-cognitive scales in the same way as normally sighted individuals.

There appear to be VFL subgroups in terms of ability to drive safely. Reaction time is important, but context dependent. Cognitive context-independent tests appear unrelated to driving test outcome for VFL individuals. The problems with context-independent testing of perceptual, cognitive, and meta-cognitive abilities when predicting safe driving capabilities are discussed.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution. Rent this article via DeepDyve. Andersson J, Peters B Simulator-based test method: assessment of driving ability in individuals with visual field loss [in Swedish]. Google Scholar. Clin Psychol Rev — In: Bower GA ed The psychology of learning and motivation.

London Academic Press, London, pp 47— Am J Ophthalmol — Blane A Through the looking glass: a review of the literature investigating the impact of glaucoma on crash risk, driving performance, and driver self-regulation in older drivers.

J Glaucoma — Top Stroke Rehabil — Gerontology — Bowers AR Driving with homonymous visual field loss: a review of the literature. Clin Exp Optom — Head scanning and detection at intersections in a simulator. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci — You are going to create a research account.

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Send assessments and training programs to students. Send assessments and training programs to your children or other family members. Send assessments and training programs to research participants. Reaction time or response time refers to the amount of time that takes places between when we perceive something to when we respond to it.

It is the ability to detect, process, and respond to a stimulus. Reaction time depends on various factors: Perception : Seeing, hearing, or feeling a stimulus with certainty is essential to having good reaction time. When the starter shoots the gun at the beginning of a race, the sound is received by the athlete's ears they perceive the stimulus. Processing : In order to have good reaction time, it's necessary to be focused and understand the information well.

Following the previous example, the runners, after hearing the gun, will be able to distinguish the sound from other background noise and know that it is time to start running process the stimulus. Response : Motor agility is necessary in order to be able to act and have good response time.

When the runners perceived and correctly processes the signal, they started moving their legs respond to the stimulus. If any part of these processes is altered, reaction time will be affected as a consequence. In other words, if one of the athletes had poor reaction time, they would have a disadvantage against the other runners.

Reaction time necessarily includes a motor component , unlike processing speed. This is why having good reaction time is associated with having good reflexes. In this example, the processes perceive, process, and respond , are done in a matter of milliseconds, but reaction time can vary depending on a variety of factors : Complexity of the stimulus- The more complex the stimulus, the more information that has to be processed, the longer this process will take.

Familiarity, preparation, and expectations : If you have to respond to a known stimulus that you've responded to before, the reaction time will be lower. The less information that you have to process, the quicker the reaction time will be. If, as in the example with the runners, you are expecting the stimulus waiting for the gun , reaction time will be even lower.

State of the organism : Some factors that may negatively affect the detection of the stimulus are fatigue, attention being sleepy , high temperature, old age, or even eating too much food or substances like alcohol or other drugs.

All of these factors may negatively affect the detection of the stimulus, processing it, and responding to it. Stimulated sensory modality : Reaction time is shorter when the stimulus that triggers the response is auditory than if it is visual because auditory stimuli require less processing. Each sensory modality has a different reaction time. Aside from other factors, the type of stimulus that we process also affects reaction time.

Simple : There is one single response to a single stimulus. For example, pressing the space bar on the on the computer when a word appears. Choice : There are different responses to different stimuli. For example, pressing the right arrow key if a word appears in Spanish, and pressing the left arrow key if the word appears in another language. Selection : There are different stimuli, but you only have to respond to one. For example, press the space bar only when the word appears in English.

If it appears in Spanish, you don't do anything. Why is reaction time so important and how does it affect daily life? Good reaction time allows us to be agile and efficient when it comes to responding to stimuli and situations like driving, having a conversation, playing sports, etc. Good response time benefits us in a variety of ways, but it's important that we properly process the information that we receive.

If someone asks you a question in an interview, they will be expecting you to answer quickly and well. The same is true for other examples, like if your car breaks down, or if you have to act on your toes- you will have to respond quickly and accurately.

Luckily, reaction time can be trained and improved. Any type of disorder that is characterized by perception, information processing, or motor problems will also affect reaction time.

This is why reaction time is so sensitive to alterations. Shobith Bangera contributed to data analysis and editing the paper. Aswini Dutt Raghavendra edited the paper. Dinesh Thangavel helped in concept and revising the paper. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article of the Year Award: Outstanding research contributions of , as selected by our Chief Editors. Read the winning articles. Journal overview. Special Issues. Academic Editor: Changiz Geula. Received 27 Aug Accepted 01 Dec Published 16 Dec Introduction Reaction is a purposeful voluntary response to an external stimulus.

Statistical Analysis Ten values of visual reaction time were recorded, two lowest and two highest values were deleted, and the average for the middle six values was calculated. Results Table 1 shows mean age group and anthropometric measurements of sixty study subjects.

BMI: body mass index. Table 1. Table 2. Pairwise comparison of visual choice reaction time among colors. Figure 1. Comparison of visual choice reaction time among colors. VRT: visual reaction time. References A.

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