Wearable Reaction Time Test

Contact

Burcu Cinaz
Dr. Bert Arnrich

Did you know that a simple reaction time (RT) test is a valuable measure to detect mild cognitive loss, Alzheimer's disease or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD)? Reaction time tests are known as simple and sensitive tests for measuring variations in cognitive efficiency, arousal and other factors. RT tests measure duration and variation of the elapsed time between a stimulus and the individual's response to it. However, a main drawback of existing desktop-based RT tests is that they require the full attention of a test person which prohibits pervasive measurements during daily routine tasks. In order to overcome this limitation, in a previous work we have designed a wearable watch-like RT test user interface device which generates haptic stimuli and recognizes user’s hand movement as response.

In order to show to what extent the wearable RT test is convenient to measure reaction times, first we designed an experiment in which we measured the reaction times of 20 subjects from two different setups. In the first half of the experiment, the participants performed a desktop-based RT test whereas in the second half of the experiment they performed the wearable RT test. In order to measure changes in the duration and variability of reaction times we induced additional cognitive load in both setups. We showed that individual changes of reaction times occurred due to the cognitive load manipulation are similar for both desktop-based and wearable reaction time test.

After showing that our wearable RT test is suitable to measure duration and variation of reaction times in a second step, we went outside the laboratory and employed the wearable RT test in the daily work life of a graphic designer. We have continuously collected RT data and self-experience assessments throughout 15 working days. We analyzed different factors such as effect of stress, high work pressure, sleep deprivation, night shift, and alcohol on reaction times. Until now, we showed that a pervasive monitoring of reaction times without interrupting the daily routine is feasible and that reaction time measures are significantly correlated with perceived variations of mood and job demands.

Publications

2011

• A Wearable User Interface for Measuring Reaction Time
  Burcu Cinaz, Christian Vogt, Bert Arnrich and Gerhard Tröster
  in: Ambient Intelligence, pages 41-50, 2011
  [ BiBTeX RIS DOI ]
• Monitoring of Cognitive Functioning with Reaction Times using Wearable Devices
  Burcu Cinaz, Bert Arnrich and Gerhard Tröster
  in: 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth), pages 514-517, 2011
  [ BiBTeX RIS PDF URL ]