List of Titles

The development of a test of reactive agility for netball : A new methodology

- Farrow, Damian, Young, Warren, Bruce, Lyndell

Authors: Farrow, Damian , Young, Warren , Bruce, Lyndell
Date: 2005
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport Vol. 8, no. 1 (2005), p. 52-60
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Description: The purpose of this study was to present a new methodology for the measurement of agility for netball that is considered more ecologically valid than previous agility tests. Specifically, the agility performance of highly-skilled (n=12), moderately-skilled (n=12) and lesser-skilled players (n=8) when responding to a life-size, interactive video display of a netball player initiating a pass was compared to a traditional, pre-planned agility movement where no external stimulus was present. The total movement times and decision times of the players were the primary dependent measures of interest. A second purpose of the research was to determine the test-retest reliability of the testing approach. Results revealed significant differences existed between the 2 test conditions demonstrating that they were measuring different types of agility. The highly-skilled group was significantly faster in both the reactive and planned test conditions relative to the lesser-skilled group, while the moderately-skilled group was significantly faster than the lesser-skilled group in the reactive test condition. The decision time component within the reactive test condition revealed that the highly-skilled players made significantly faster decisions than the lesser-skilled players. It is reasoned that it is this decision-making component of reactive agility that contributes to the significant differences between the two test conditions. The testing approach was shown to have good test-retest reliability with an intra-class correlation of r= .83.
Description: C1
Description: 2003001188

Constrained action selection in children with developmental coordination disorder

- Pettit, Lewis, Charles, Jennifer, Wilson, Andrew, Plumb, Mandy, Brockman, Anne, Williams, Justin, Mon-Williams, Mark

Authors: Pettit, Lewis , Charles, Jennifer , Wilson, Andrew , Plumb, Mandy , Brockman, Anne , Williams, Justin , Mon-Williams, Mark
Date: 2008
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Human Movement Science Vol. 27, no. 2 (2008), p. 286-295
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Description: The effect of advance ('precue') information on short aiming movements was explored in adults, high school children, and primary school children with and without developmental coordination disorder (n=10, 14, 16, 10, respectively). Reaction times in the DCD group were longer than in the other groups and were more influenced by the extent to which the precue constrained the possible action space. In contrast, reaction time did not alter as a function of precue condition in adults. Children with DCD showed greater inaccuracy of response (despite the increased RT). We suggest that the different precue effects reflect differences in the relative benefits of priming an action prior to definitive information about the movement goal. The benefits are an interacting function of the task and the skill level of the individual. Our experiment shows that children with DCD gain a benefit from advance preparation in simple aiming movements, highlighting their low skill levels. This result suggests that goal-directed RTs may have diagnostic potential within the clinic.

Slow motor responses to visual stimuli of low salience in autism

- Todd, Jessica, Mills, Charlotte, Wilson, Andrew, Plumb, Mandy, Mon-Williams, Mark

Authors: Todd, Jessica , Mills, Charlotte , Wilson, Andrew , Plumb, Mandy , Mon-Williams, Mark
Date: 2009
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Journal of Motor Behavior Vol. 41, no. 5 (2009), p. 419-426
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Description: The authors studied 2 tasks that placed differing demands on detecting relevant visual information and generating appropriate gaze shifts in adults and children with and without autism. In Experiment 1, participants fixated a cross and needed to make large gaze shifts, but researchers provided explicit instructions about shifting. Children with autism were indistinguishable from comparison groups in this top-down task. In Experiment 2 (bottom-up), a fixation cross remained or was removed prior to the presentation of a peripheral target of low visual salience. In this gap-effect experiment, children with autism showed lengthened reaction times overall but no specific deficit in overlap trials. The results show evidence of a general deficit in manual responses to visual stimuli of low salience and no evidence of a deficit in top-down attention shifting. Older children with autism appeared able to generate appropriate motor responses, but stimulus-driven visual attention seemed impaired.

Modeling neurocognitive reaction time with gamma distribution

- Santhanagopalan, Meena, Chetty, Madhu, Foale, Cameron, Aryal, Sunil, Klein, Britt

Authors: Santhanagopalan, Meena , Chetty, Madhu , Foale, Cameron , Aryal, Sunil , Klein, Britt
Date: 2018
Type: Text , Conference proceedings
Relation: ACSW'18 . Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference; Brisbane, QLD; January 2018; Article 28 p. 1-10
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Description: As a broader effort to build a holistic biopsychosocial health metric, reaction time data obtained from participants undertaking neurocognitive tests have been examined using Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) for assessing its distribution. Many of the known existing methods assume, that the reaction time data follows a Gaussian distribution and thus commonly use statistical measures such as Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for analysis. However, it is not mandatory for the reaction time data, to necessarily follow Gaussian distribution and in many instances, it can be better modeled by other representations such as Gamma distribution. Unlike Gaussian distribution which is defined using mean and variance, the Gamma distribution is defined using shape and scale parameters which also considers higher order moments of data such as skewness and kurtosis. Generalized Linear Models (GLM), based on the family exponential distributions such as Gamma distribution, which have been used to model reaction time in other domains, have not been fully explored for modeling reaction time data in psychology domain. While limited use of Gamma distribution have been reported [5, 17, 21], for analyzing response times, their application has been somewhat ad-hoc rather than systematic. For this proposed research, we use a real life biopsychosocial dataset, generated from the 'digital health' intervention programs conducted by the Faculty of Health, Federation University, Australia. The two digital intervention programs were the 'Mindfulness' program and 'Physical Activity' program. The neurocognitive tests were carried out as part of the 'Mindfulness' program. In this paper, we investigate the participants' reaction time distributions in neurocognitive tests such as the Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) Go/No-Go test [19], which is a subset of the larger biopsychosocial data set. PEBL is an open source software system for designing and running psychological experiments. Analysis of participants' reaction time in the PEBL Go/No-Go test, shows that the reaction time data are more compatible with a Gamma distribution and clearly demonstrate that these can be better modeled by Gamma distribution.

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Differential associations of hypoxia, sleep fragmentation, and depressive symptoms with cognitive dysfunction in obstructive sleep apnea

- Alomri, Ridwan, Kennedy, Gerard, Wali, Siraj, Ahejaili, Faris, Robinson, Stephen

Authors: Alomri, Ridwan , Kennedy, Gerard , Wali, Siraj , Ahejaili, Faris , Robinson, Stephen
Date: 2021
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Sleep Vol. 44, no. 4 (2021), p.
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Description: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by recurrent episodes of partial or complete cessation of breathing during sleep and increased effort to breathe. This study examined patients who underwent overnight polysomnographic studies in a major sleep laboratory in Saudi Arabia. The study aimed to determine the extent to which intermittent hypoxia, sleep disruption, and depressive symptoms are independently associated with cognitive impairments in OSA. In the sample of 90 participants, 14 had no OSA, 30 mild OSA, 23 moderate OSA, and 23 severe OSA. The findings revealed that hypoxia and sleep fragmentation are independently associated with impairments of sustained attention and reaction time (RT). Sleep fragmentation, but not hypoxia, was independently associated with impairments in visuospatial deficits. Depressive symptoms were independently associated with impairments in the domains of sustained attention, RT, visuospatial ability, and semantic and episodic autobiographical memories. Since the depressive symptoms are independent of hypoxia and sleep fragmentation, effective reversal of cognitive impairment in OSA may require treatment interventions that target each of these factors. © Sleep Research Society 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Sleep Research Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.

Association between cognitive dysfunction and nocturnal peaks of blood pressure estimated from pulse transit time in obstructive sleep apnoea

- Alomri, Ridwan, Kennedy, Gerard, Wali, Siraj, Alhejaili, Faris, Zelko, Matthew, Robinson, Stephen

Authors: Alomri, Ridwan , Kennedy, Gerard , Wali, Siraj , Alhejaili, Faris , Zelko, Matthew , Robinson, Stephen
Date: 2022
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Sleep Medicine Vol. 90, no. (2022), p. 185-191
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Description: Background: Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is characterised by recurrent episodes of partial or complete cessation of breathing during sleep and an increased effort to breathe. Patients with untreated OSA exhibit cognitive impairment that is only partly accounted for by hypoxia and sleep disruption, suggesting that other factors remain to be identified. OSA can involve repeated spikes of nocturnal blood pressure because of increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system during sleep. While high resting blood pressure is associated with cognitive dysfunction, it is not yet known whether peaks in nocturnal blood pressure are associated with cognitive impairment in OSA. Methods: A cohort of patients participated in overnight polysomnographic studies at a major sleep laboratory to investigate whether nocturnal elevations in blood pressure are associated with cognitive dysfunction in OSA. Nocturnal pulse transit time was measured as a surrogate for arterial blood pressure during sleep. Results: Of the 75 patients, 12 had no obstructive sleep apnoea, 26 had mild OSA, 18 moderate, and 19 severe OSA. The results revealed that systolic blood pressure peaks were associated with OSA severity, while diastolic blood pressure peaks were not. Peaks of nocturnal systolic blood pressure were independently associated with poorer performance on a test of visuospatial function, but not with impairments on tests of sustained attention, reaction time or autobiographical memory. Conclusion: The present findings indicate nocturnal peaks of systolic blood pressure that are substantially higher than normal daytime values may contribute to visuospatial dysfunction in OSA. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

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