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Validation of a novel reaction time test specific for military personnel
Janicijevic, Danica
Miras-Moreno, Sergio
Pérez
Castilla, Alejandro
Vera, Jesús
Redondo, Beatriz
Jiménez, Raimundo
García-Ramos, Amador
Human Kinetics Journals
2023
A military-specific reaction time (RT) test was developed to explore its reliability and sensitivity to discriminate between military personnel and sport science students. Fifteen male professional Spanish soldiers and 16 male sport science students completed two RT test modalities: military-specific and nonspecific RT tests. For each RT test modality, both the Simple (i.e., one stimulus, one response) and the Go, No-Go RT (i.e., true, and false stimuli, one response) were tested. The military-specific RT test consisted of a video presented through virtual reality glasses of a forest environment in which soldiers would appear from behind different bushes (stimuli) and the response consisted of pressing the button of a gun-shaped mouse (when they saw a soldier pointing a rifle at them). Both Simple and Go, No-Go RT reached acceptable reliability in both populations (coefficient of variation ≤ 9.64%). Military personnel presented a lower RT than sport science students during the military-specific RT test (p ≤ .001), while no differences were obtained during the nonspecific RT test. RT values were not significantly correlated between the military-specific and nonspecific RT tests (r ≤ .02). These findings collectively suggest that the novel military-specific RT test is an ecologically valid alternative to evaluate the information processing abilities of military personnel.
Ciencias de la salud
Medicina básica