Minimum detectable change in reaction time to the Posner task due to change in sustained attention.
Kazuya Akiyama, Shinta Takeuchi, Yukiko Makihara and 1 others
PMID 35400833WHAT IT FOUND
In healthy young adults, reaction-time changes smaller than 23 to 34 milliseconds, depending on condition, may be measurement error, not real change.
Key findings
01The smallest reaction-time change beyond measurement error was 23 to 34 milliseconds, depending on the trial condition.
02Scores from the two sessions agreed closely enough that all conditions had intraclass correlation coefficients above 0.80.
03There was no consistent shift in reaction time between sessions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample was small, with only 10 healthy young adults. The authors state the small sample size as a limitation. Participants were healthy and young, so the values may not apply to older adults or patients with unilateral spatial neglect. The paper reports values only for healthy young adults, not for patients with unilateral spatial neglect or elderly participants.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use the 23 to 34 millisecond threshold as evidence that a patient's spatial attention has improved. It was calculated from 10 healthy young adults, not from patients with unilateral spatial neglect or older adults.