Adolescents’ Cognitive Abilities, Reaction Time, and Working Memory Performance by Vienna Test Systems

Abstract

Abstract - Mental and physical health components are critical in child’s development. However, adolescents are especially vulnerable group presenting multiple health risks of chronic disease, sleeping and eating problems. Moreover, the long time spent at screens increases possibility to develop addictions. There is a lack of comprehensive interdisciplinary assessment tools for adolescents, to assess their mental health components, and provide preventive activities. It is very important to develop a methodology that can accurately assess the minor cognitive and health deviations that can be caused by an unhealthy lifestyle and excessive time spent on screens. This research explores the possibilities to record and compare parameters of cognitive abilities, reaction time, and working memory using Vienna test systems for different groups of adolescents by their physical activity and health levels. The results of this study demonstrated that the reaction time in adolescents was shorter using the leading hand in comparison with using the non-leading hand, 272.842±44.001ms vs 306.631±57.081ms on Vienna test for low physical activity (LPA) adolescents group. In the STROOP test color evaluation results were faster than word reading test results. The median of reaction time of LPA adolescents for color evaluation was 0.897±0.221ms and 0.968±0.15ms for reading. Vienna test system has specific tests that can be used to determine memory parameters, providing different assessment approaches to compare the obtained results. Group of adolescents with mild chronic health conditions performs statistically significantly lower parameter in particular tests in comparison with adolescents with low and high physical activity.