Age- and Gender-related differences in Visual, Auditory, and Visual–Auditory Reaction Times: A cross-sectional Analytical study
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Abstract
Background: Reaction time is the interval of time between the presentation of the stimulus and the appearance of an appropriate voluntary response. It reflects the speed of neural processing and motor response. Ageing remains one of the factors that impacts reaction time, but comparative data across age groups using simple, accessible digital tools remains limited.
Objectives: To analyse the Visual, Auditory, and Visual - Auditory reaction time across healthy age groups between 10-90 years and across genders.
Materials and methods: The study was a cross-sectional analytical study of 579 participants between the ages of 10 and 90 years, stratified into 8 decade-wise classified age groups. The study measured visual, auditory, and visual-auditory RTs using a Reaction Time Software developed by Gary Darby (Copyright © 2001–2011). Each participant had to respond to 10 trials of each stimulus. After the test, the mean of the longest and shortest duration of reaction time was measured. An analysis was conducted to compare young, middle-aged, and older adults.
Results: The longest and shortest mean reaction time for Visual stimuli was 1.21±0.30 and 0.54±0.10, for auditory stimuli was 1.29±0.17 and 0.64±0.08, while for combined visual –auditory stimuli were 1.03±0.22 and 0.51±0.09, in seconds, respectively. A one-way analysis of variance revealed a statistically significant (p < 0.001) age-related difference for both longest and shortest visual, auditory, and visual–auditory reaction times. An Unpaired T test, for between-gender analysis, showed no statistically significant (p > 0.05) gender differences across measures of reaction time.
Conclusion: Both the longest and shortest, visual, auditory, and combined visual-auditory reaction times increase significantly with age, reflecting a decline in sensorimotor processing.
Keywords: reaction time software, visual reaction time, auditory reaction time, combined visual-auditory reaction time, 8 decade-wise age groups.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Personal views expressed by the contributors in their articles are not necessarily those of the Journal of Associated Medical Sciences, Faculty of Associated Medical Sciences, Chiang Mai University.
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