About: Psychomotor vigilance task

A psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) is a sustained-attention, reaction-timed task that measures the consistency with which subjects respond to a visual stimulus. Research indicates increased sleep debt or sleep deficit correlates with deteriorated alertness, slower problem solving, declined psychomotor skills, and increased rate of false responses. Use of PVT tests was championed by David F. Dinges and popularized by its ease of scoring, simple metrics, and convergent validity. However, it was shown that motivation can counteract the detrimental effects of sleep loss for up to 36 hours.