Can a shorter psychomotor vigilance task be used as a reasonable substitute for the ten-minute psychomotor vigilance task?

The 10 min psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) is commonly used in laboratory studies to assess the impact of sleep loss, sustained wakefulness, and/or time of day on neurobehavioral performance. In field settings, though, it may be impractical for participants to perform a test of this length. The aim of this study was to identify a performance measure that is sensitive to the effects of fatigue but less burdensome than a 10 min test. Sixteen participants (11 female, 5 male; mean age = 21.7 years) slept in the sleep laboratory overnight then remained awake for 28 h from 08:00 h. During every second hour, participants completed three PVTs of differing duration (10 min, 5 min, 90 sec). For the 5 min/10 min comparison, ANOVA indicated that response time was significantly affected by test length (F1,14 = 26.9, p < .001) and hours of wakefulness (F13,182 = 46.1, p < .001) but not by their interaction (F13,182 = 1.7, ns). There was a strong correlation between response time on the 5 and 10 min PVTs (r = .88, p < .001). For the 90 sec/10 min comparison, ANOVA indicated that response time was significantly affected by test length (F1,14 = 65.9, p < .001) and hours of wakefulness (F13,182 = 29.7, p < .001) as well as by their interaction (F13,182 = 6.0, p < .001). There was a strong correlation between response time on the 90 sec and 10 min PVTs (r = .77, p < .001). The effects of hours of wakefulness on neurobehavioral performance were similar for the 5 min and 10 min PVTs. In contrast, performance on the 90 sec PVT was less affected by hours of wakefulness than on the 10 min PVT. In addition, performance on the 10 min PVT was more highly correlated with the 5 min PVT than the 90 sec PVT. These data indicate that the 5 min PVT may provide a reasonable substitute for the 10 min PVT in circumstances where a test shorter than 10 min is required.