Study on simple reaction and choice times in patients with type I diabetes

Abstract

A study on simple reaction time (SRT) and choice reaction time in patients having diabetes is described in this paper. The study was applied to fourteen patients with type I diabetes, as well as to fourteen non-diabetic persons. The research is based on two visual signal perception experiments, both implemented on a computer based environment. The SRT experiment consisted on measuring participants' reaction times to a light change event in a simulated traffic light scenario. The choice reaction time was studied through the performance indexes (d′) achieved by participants in a two alternative forced experiment, where a known visual signal is identified from two noisy images. According to the obtained results, the diabetic patients' SRTs were an average of 24% longer than the reaction time of non-diabetic persons, in the same way a significant average difference of 41% was obtained in the efficient index d′ too. A positive correlation of 0.6594 between the time periods since diabetes has been diagnosed and the average SRTs of diabetic patients was obtained, also significant correlation differences between age of all experiments participants and resulting variables, SRTs and d′, were observed; for instance the correlation factor between participants' ages and their average SRTs was −0.8529 for diabetic patients, meanwhile a value of −0.2905 was obtained for non-diabetic persons. The evidence suggests that the time period since diabetes has been diagnosed notably affects motor and sensorial systems maturity, and consequently conduction speed of sural and peroneal nerves.