The association of quality of sleep with reaction time and aiming accuracy in healthy young adults

Abstract

To assess the association of sleep quality with reaction time and aiming accuracy in young healthy individuals, we performed a one-group cross-sectional study in an outpatient clinic of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at a University Hospital. Overall, 32 young men at the age range of 18 to 24 years were recruited from the university students. All participants were healthy people with no important physical or psychological problems. Quality of sleep was assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality questionnaire. Reaction time and aiming accuracy were measured with electrical reaction timer and tremometer, respectively. Quality of sleep was significantly correlated with reaction time and aiming accuracy (all p values < 0.001). In reaction time Pearson's correlation coefficients were 0.882, 0.868, 0.824, and 0.894 for the association of sleep quality with simple auditory stimuli, simple visual stimuli, choice, and the number of errors, respectively. In aiming accuracy the coefficients were 0.823, 0.828, and 0.853 for total time, error time, and number of errors, respectively. To our knowledge, there has been no research published in the literature for the effect of sleep quality on aiming accuracy. Our results showed that the quality of sleep is obviously correlated with reaction time and aiming accuracy. The relations are positive and highly significant. Healthy young men with a higher quality of sleep respond faster to external stimuli and have greater concentration and aiming accuracy. Improving the quality of sleep enhances cognitive performance.