Implementation and evaluation of wearable reaction time tests

Abstract

Conducting cognitive assessment tests throughout normal daily life offers new opportunities to early detect changes in cognitive efficiency. Such tests would allow identification of early symptoms of cognitive impairment, monitor the progress of disease processes related to cognitive efficiency and reduce the risk of cognitive overload. Reaction time tests are known as simple and sensitive tests for detecting variation in cognitive efficiency. A drawback of existing reaction time tests is that they require the full attention of a test person, which prohibits the measurement of cognitive efficiency during daily routine tasks. In this contribution we present the design, implementation and empirical evaluation of two wearable reaction time tests that can be operated throughout everyday life. We designed and implemented wearable watch-like devices, which combine the generation of haptic stimuli and the recognition of hand gestures as the subject’s response. For the evaluation of the wearable interface, we conducted a user study with 20 subjects to investigate to what extent we can measure changes in length and variability of user’s reaction time with the wearable interfaces in comparison to well accepted, traditional desktop-based tests. Based on the achieved statistical results, we conclude that the presented wearable reaction time tests are suitable to measure factors that influence length and variability of reaction times.