A novel mobile application to examine impaired vigilance through digital means

Abstract

The psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) is a three to thirty-minute test widely used to measure alertness and vigilance. However, only a few comprehensively validated PVTs are currently available through digital means, e.g., mobile devices. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the usefulness of a novel three-minute PVT (PVTSR) delivered through a touchscreen mobile device. The present study comprised 41 healthy or undiagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea participants recruited through local advertisement in Reykjavik, Iceland between 2021 and 2022. First, participants completed an in-lab ten-minute standard PVT (PVTstd) on a computer with the Inquisit software at Reykjavik University Sleep Institute. Later, the same participants completed a three-minute PVTSR in the Sleep Revolution mobile application at home. With a paired sample t-test, differences between the PVT outputs, i.e., mean reaction time (RT) and median RT, were compared between PVTstd and PVTSR. In addition, effect sizes and Pearson correlations between the PVTstd and PVTSR outcomes were evaluated. The average mean RT (PVTstd: 350.2 ms; PVTSR: 424.1 ms) and median RT (PVTstd: 334.4 ms; PVTSR: 415.2 ms) were significantly (p < 0.001) shorter in PVTstd compared to PVTSR. The effect sizes for mean RT and median RT were 0.70 and 0.79, respectively. In addition, the correlations of mean RT (r = 0.96, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.92–0.98) and median RT (r = 0.94, 95% CI: 0.89–0.97) between PVTstd and PVTSR were high. Although median and mean reaction times were systematically higher when measured with the mobile application, there was a strong correlation between the methods’ outcomes. After accounting for this systematic increase, the novel PVTSR approach shows potential for evaluating impaired vigilance. With future fine-tuning to adjust for the systematic delay, this readily available three-minute test could enable long-term follow-up of impaired vigilance in participants’ homes.