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Precision of measures of saccadic eye movements and conventional psychomotor function tests
Author(s) -
Mannion M. F.,
Lynch G.,
King D. J.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
human psychopharmacology: clinical and experimental
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.461
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1099-1077
pISSN - 0885-6222
DOI - 10.1002/hup.470090105
Subject(s) - psychomotor learning , flicker fusion threshold , saccadic masking , audiology , psychology , eye movement , variation (astronomy) , statistics , mathematics , flicker , medicine , cognition , computer science , neuroscience , physics , astrophysics , operating system
Measures of variability are rarely quoted in drug studies of psychomotor function. Five recent studies were therefore analysed to calculate the coefficients of variation for different tests of psychomotor function, both during and between study days. Saccadic eye movement analysis and critical flicker fusion threshold were found to have low coefficients of variation (ranging from 2·7 to 7·5 per cent) while visual analogue rating scales and the digit symbol substitution test were found to have much higher coefficients of variation (ranging from 7·9 to 17·6 per cent). It is suggested that measures of test variability be routinely assessed in psychomotor studies as a check on test methodology.