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Mental Stress and its Implications on Reaction time

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International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) - volume4 Issue5–May 2013

Mental Stress and its Implications on Reaction time

Apoorvagiri#1, Nagananda M S#2
#
Department of Instrumentation Technology, R V College of Engineering
R V Vidyanikethan Post
Mysore Road, Bangalore - 560059, Karnataka, India

Abstract— Stress is a common in everyday life. Mental distress Reaction time is one of the most important factors in
leads to increase in the reaction time and decrease in attention vigilance task. In literature, Reaction time has been a favourite
and concentration. It could results in poor performance. subject of experimental researchers since the middle of the
Reaction time implies on stress. When the mind gets exhausted, it nineteenth century. Psychologists have named three basic
usually faces some complications to do mental tasks at the
kinds of reaction time experiments [9, 10]:
satisfactory performance level which leads to many happenings
and mishaps. Subsequently, monitoring of mental stress is 1. In simple reaction time experiments, there is only one
essential to assess stress. This paper reviews about quantification stimulus and one response. 'X at a known location,' 'spot the
of stress using reaction time. dot,' and 'reaction to sound' all measure simple reaction time.
2. In recognition reaction time experiments, there are some
Keywords— Distress, Eustress, Cognition, Latency, and Reaction stimuli that should be responded to (the 'memory set'), and
Time. others that should get no response (the 'distracter set'). There
is still only one correct response. 'Symbol recognition' and
I. INTRODUCTION 'tone recognition' are both recognition experiments.
Mental stress refers to changes in the psycho-physiological 3. In choice reaction time experiments, the user must give a
state that people experience during the course of prolonged response that corresponds to the stimulus, such as pressing a
periods of demanding cognitive activity that require sustained key corresponding to a letter if the letter appears on the screen.
mental efficiency [1]. Nowadays, it is becoming increasingly The Reaction Time program does not use this type of
common for people to stretch their limits to squeeze more experiment because the response is always pressing the
time for work. That extra time is usually taken by decreasing spacebar.
the time period for which we sleep. Though it seems as an Many researchers have confirmed that reaction to sound is
easy concession to make, but slowly and surely this lack of faster than reaction to light, with mean auditory reaction times
sleep catches up with us [2]. This is true not only for students being 140-160 ms and visual reaction times being 180-200 ms
preparing for exams or officials, but also for industrial [10, 11]. Perhaps this is because an auditory stimulus only
workers, health care professionals, drivers [3], pilots and in takes 8-10 ms to reach the brain [12] but a visual stimulus
military operations. In the latter situations, the people are takes 20-40 ms [13]. Differences in reaction time between
working in high risk situations, and any mistake on their part, these types of stimuli persist whether the subject is asked to
can even lead to loss of life for them or others. This is why the make a simple response or a complex response [14] For about
study of mental stress is very important to solve daily routine 120 years, the accepted figures for mean simple reaction times
problems. for college-age individuals have been about 190 ms (0.19 sec)
for light stimuli and about 160 ms for sound stimuli [10, 11].
A. Stress
Historically, stress has been defined as a reaction from a II. LITERATURE SURVEY
calm state to an excited state for the purpose of preserving the The pioneer reaction time study was that of Donders (1868)
integrity of the organism. For an organism as highly [20]. He showed that a simple reaction time is shorter than a
developed and independent of the natural environment as choice reaction time, and that the recognition reaction time is
socialized man, most stressors are intellectual, emotional and longest of all. Laming (1968) [21] concluded that simple
perceptual [4]. Some researchers make a distinction between reaction times averaged 220 ms but recognition reaction times
“eustress” and “distress,” where eustress is a good stress, such averaged 384 ms. This is in line with many studies concluding
as joy , or a stress leading to an eventual state which is more that a complex stimulus (e.g., several letters in symbol
beneficial to the organism[5], however in this paper we will recognition vs. one letter) elicits a slower reaction time [22;
refer to stress only as distress, stress with a negative bias, 23; 24]. An example very much like our experiment was
particularly distress caused by an increase in workload. There reported by Surwillo (1973) [25], in which reaction was faster
have been a number of studies that link highly aroused stress when a single tone sounded than when either a high or a low
states with impaired decision making capabilities[6], tone sounded and the subject was supposed to react only when
decreased situational awareness[7] and degraded the high tone sounded.
performance[8] which could impair ability. Several investigators have looked at the effect of increasing
the number of possible stimuli in recognition and choice
B. Reaction Time

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International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) - volume4 Issue5–May 2013

experiments. Hick (1952) [26] found that in choice reaction

time experiments, response was proportional to log (N), where
N is the number of different possible stimuli. In other words,
reaction time rises with N, but once N gets large, reaction time
no longer increases so much as when N was small. Sternberg
(1969) [27] said that in recognition experiments, as the
number of items in the memory set increases, the reaction
time rises proportionately (that is, proportional to N, not to log
N). Reaction times ranged from 420 ms for 1 valid stimulus
(such as one letter in symbol recognition) to 630 ms for 6
valid stimuli, increasing by about 40 ms every time another
item was added to the memory set. Nickerson (1972) [28]
reviewed several recognition studies and agreed with these
results.
Many researchers have confirmed that reaction to sound Fig 2. The proposed relation between stimulus intensity and reaction time.
was faster than reaction to light, with mean auditory reaction
times being 140-160 ms and visual reaction times being 180- Another factor contributing to reaction time is age.
200 ms [22, 23, 24]. Perhaps this is because an auditory Reaction time shortens from infancy into the late 20s, then
stimulus only takes 8-10 ms to reach the brain [29], but a increases slowly until the 50s and 60s, and then lengthens
visual stimulus takes 20-40 ms [30]. Reaction time to touch is faster as the person gets into his 70s and beyond [16, 17].
intermediate; at 155 ms (23, 24) also cite literature that shows Previous studies also indicate that in almost every age group,
that visual stimuli perceived by different portions of the eye males have faster reaction times than females, and female
produce different reaction times. The fastest reaction time disadvantage is not reduced by practice [10; 18].
comes when a stimulus is seen by the cones (when the person Welford [10, 11] found that, reaction time gets slower
is looking right at the stimulus). If the stimulus is picked up when the subject is stressed. Singleton (1953) [34] observed
by rods (around the edge of the eye), the reaction is slower. that, deterioration due to stress is more marked when the
Froeberg (1907) [30] found that visual stimuli that are reaction time task is complicated than when it is simple.
longer in duration elicit faster reaction times, and Wells (1913) Mental stress, especially sleepiness, has the greatest effect.
[31] got the same result for auditory stimuli. Luce (1986) [32] Kroll (1973) [35] found no effect of purely muscular stress on
reported that the weaker the stimulus (such as a very faint reaction time.
light) is, the longer the reaction time is. However, after the Unpleasant odours (such as from spoiled food) might have
stimulus gets to certain strength, reaction time becomes great relevance to survival and health. They found that
constant. In other words, the relationship is: reaction time to unpleasant food odours was faster and more
accurate than reaction to pleasant odours and to non-food
odours.
At the risk of being politically incorrect, in almost every
age group, males have faster reaction times than females [10,
11, 12]. This study is remarkable because it included over
7400 subjects. Bellis (1933) [36] reported that mean time to
press a key in response to a light was 220 ms for males and
260 ms for females; for sound the difference was 190 ms
(males) to 200 ms (females). In comparison, Engel (1972) [37]
reported a reaction time to sound of 227 ms (male) to 242 ms
(female). However, things may be changing--Silverman (2006)
[38] reported evidence that the male advantage in visual
reaction time is getting smaller (especially outside the US),
possibly because more women are participating in driving and
Fig 1. The proposed relation between stimulus intensity and reaction time. fast-action sports. Spierer et al. (2010) [39] reported that when
male soccer players were compared with female lacrosse
III. RELATED FACTORS players, males were able to respond faster to both visual and
auditory stimuli. They said that the male advantage was
There are many factors affecting reaction time. One factor greatest when using visual stimuli. Botwinick and Thompson
is 'arousal' or state of attention, including muscular tension. (1966) [40] found that almost all of the male-female
Reaction time is fastest with an intermediate level of arousal, difference was accounted for by the lag between the
and deteriorates when the subject is either too relaxed or too presentation of the stimulus and the beginning of muscle
tense [10; 15]. contraction. Muscle contraction times were the same for males
and females. In a surprising finding, Szinnai et al.(2005) [41]

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International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) - volume4 Issue5–May 2013

found that gradual dehydration (loss of 2.6% of body weight vulnerability to driver stress and intrusive cognitions were
over a 7-day period) caused females to have lengthened related to impaired lateral control of the vehicle mainly when
choice reaction time, but males to have shortened choice task demands were relatively low, contrary to the overload
reaction times. Adam et al. (1999) [42] reported that males use hypothesis. These data indicate that performance in this task
more complex strategy than females. Barral and Debu (2004) paradigm is characterized by adaptive mobilization of effort to
[43] found that while men were faster than women at aiming meet changing task demands. Stressed drivers adapted to high
at a target, the women were more accurate. Bayless et al.(2012) levels of demand fairly efficiently. The levels of stress
[44] found that when a choice reaction time task was made involved here obviously fall within the range that can be
more challenging for rats by weak stimuli and distraction, compensated for by strain or mobilization. But, in contrast,
male rats tended to "jump the gun" and make premature Metzger and Parasuraman, (2001) found that, at higher levels
responses, but female rats were more likely to miss valid of overload, created by a secondary task during driving in
stimuli. Note that this study used rats, not humans. Jevas and high traffic density and assessed by HR and self-report
Yan (2001) [45] reported that age-related deterioration in measures, performance does gradually but significantly
reaction time was the same in men and women. decline. Parallel results were reported by Zeier (1994) for air
Study on reaction times in performance in vigilance tasks traffic controllers.
found that individual periodograms indicated a rhythm in
attentional capacity with periods ranging from 5 to 30 min
[19]. These findings indicate that considerable individual
variation can be accounted for by considering individual
periodicity in performance.

IV. METHODS FOR ASSESSING STRESS

A. Self-report measures
Stress affects how we perform, how we feel (self-report),
and many of our bodily functions (neuro-physiological). All
three then should be able to serve in some capacity as
measures of stress, independent of environmental or physical
conditions that are said to be stressful [46]. Systematic and
exacting experimental studies of stress and its effects on
cognition require valid and reliable measures that can be taken
Fig 3. Variation of stress level and performance with respect to time
both in the laboratory and in the real world. The best work
available on the evaluation of subjective states of stress has Task induced changes in stress are described within
been reported by Matthews and his collaborators [47]. Matthews’ system as patterned shifts in task engagement,
It is difficult to create extreme or prolonged conditions of distress, and worry. Patterns are sensitive to task and
stress in the laboratory. Laboratory studies generally focus on environmental demands. Matthews et al [46] illustrated this
relatively weak acute stress. An example involves adding effect with studies of automobile driving. Operators’ appraisal
workload or secondary task requirements to a primary or focal of task demands (workload) and choice of coping strategy
task. Subjects often find these additions to be stressful at least mediate these stress effects. Thus, for Matthews, stress is an
at the outset and they can adversely affect primary task adaptive transaction between operator and task. Matthews et
performance. Given some experience or practice, however, al. speculate that the consequences of task automation (e.g.,
individuals can often find ways to accommodate to the greater cockpit automation) will vary widely depending on appraisal
demands of doing two things at once. of the reliability and ease of control of the system, type and
Consider the work of Matthews, Sparkes, and Bygrave, number of residual tasks left to the operator, and interpersonal
(1996) [50], who tested the hypothesis that driver stress is factors such as personality and coping style. Thus there is
associated with performance impairment mainly because likely to be no simple remedy for stress-related problems
stress-prone drivers are vulnerable to overload of attentional associated with automation, such as boredom or complacency
resources. In other words, those who are susceptible to the [47]. Fine-grained assessment of the operator’s feeling state
effects of stress suffer from limitations on attentional and cognitions is required to determine vulnerability to
resources and are more distractible by irrelevant non driving performance degradation under stress.
events. Young subjects performed a simulated drive
concurrently with a grammatical reasoning task, presented B. Performance or Behavioural Measures
either visually or auditorily. In this experiment, the patterns of But the issue of which type of measure, self-report or
dual-task interference predicted by attentional resource theory neuro-physiological, is the better or more appropriate measure
were actually not found, although some interference was of stress effects is far from settled. Hancock and Vasmatzidis
apparent with the auditory reasoning task. Measures of (1998) [48] contend that, rather than either self-report or

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International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) - volume4 Issue5–May 2013

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