Sleep Deprivation Report

Abstract
390 West Point cadets that are all enrolled in PL 100 took part in an experiment designed to test both their simple reaction times as well as their choice reaction times; each participant was subject to both the experimental and control groups. What the experiment consisted of was a simple task in which the participant had to press any key as fast as possible upon being presented with a single stimulus. The other task consisted of two different stimuli appearing, in no particular order or pattern, on a computer screen and the participant had to choose between two keys to click according to the color of each stimuli. After receiving all the data, it was obvious that the simple reaction times were quicker than the choice reaction time.
Our experiment had a lot of room for error. One of the factors that may have affected the results we received could be the level of fatigue each cadet was at. Sleep deprivation may have slowed the reaction time of some participants, it is true that reaction time gets slower when the subject is fatigued (Welford 1968, 1980). If the participants completed the tasks in a room full of noisy people or other distractions, this too may have contributed to slower reaction times; Trimmel and Poelzl (2006) discovered that background noises stretched reaction time by slowing down parts of the cerebral cortex. Under the conditions, this experiment proved that simple reaction times are in fact faster than choice reaction times. This makes sense because the brain only has to worry about a single stimulus. Next time we can test a variety of stimulus, such as shapes or words under a more controlled environment (i.e. a quiet room), this way we can get a more accurate, better understanding of reaction