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How does cognitive function measured by the reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency correlate with the academic performance of students?
BACKGROUND: The reaction time (RT) is “the time taken for the appearance of rapid voluntary reaction by an individual following a stimulus, either auditory or visual” and the Critical Flickering Fusion Frequency (CFFF) is “the rate at which successively presented light stimuli appear to be steady an...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7734712/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33317499 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02416-7 |
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author | Prabu Kumar, Archana Omprakash, Abirami Kuppusamy, Maheshkumar K.N., Maruthy B.W.C., Sathiyasekaran P.V., Vijayaraghavan Ramaswamy, Padmavathi |
author_facet | Prabu Kumar, Archana Omprakash, Abirami Kuppusamy, Maheshkumar K.N., Maruthy B.W.C., Sathiyasekaran P.V., Vijayaraghavan Ramaswamy, Padmavathi |
author_sort | Prabu Kumar, Archana |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The reaction time (RT) is “the time taken for the appearance of rapid voluntary reaction by an individual following a stimulus, either auditory or visual” and the Critical Flickering Fusion Frequency (CFFF) is “the rate at which successively presented light stimuli appear to be steady and continuous”. RT and CFFF are commonly used for the assessment of cognitive functions that are known to influence academic performance. However, data about the exact correlation between these are scarce, particularly in India. This research aimed to study the association between visual RT (VRT), auditory RT (ART) and CFFF and their impact on the academic performance of undergraduate students. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 700 students of Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at a private medical university in South India, during the period from 2015 to 2017. The VRT, ART and CFFF were evaluated, and the best out of three subsequent attempts was recorded. The mean score (in percentage) of the three best marks out of the five internal assessments for the course during each academic year was considered for analysis. The association between the different cognitive tests and the average academic performance was analysed. RESULTS: Female students had faster VRT (n = 345, mean = 243.97, SD = 83.87) than male students (n = 273, mean = 274.86, SD = 96.97) (p = 0.001). VRT and ART had a moderate negative correlation with academic performance (for ART, r = − 0.42, p < 0.001; for VRT; r = − 0.40, p < 0.001). CFFF had a very weak positive correlation with academic performance (r = 0.19, p = 0.01). The only independent predictors of academic performance were RT and gender (Adjusted R(2) = 0.11). CONCLUSION: Although there is a correlation between CFFF and cognitive function, our study showed only a weak correlation between CFFF and academic performance. Female students had faster RTs, and gender was an independent predictor of academic performance. Rather, students with faster RTs appear to have an advantage in academic performance. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7734712 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77347122020-12-15 How does cognitive function measured by the reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency correlate with the academic performance of students? Prabu Kumar, Archana Omprakash, Abirami Kuppusamy, Maheshkumar K.N., Maruthy B.W.C., Sathiyasekaran P.V., Vijayaraghavan Ramaswamy, Padmavathi BMC Med Educ Research Article BACKGROUND: The reaction time (RT) is “the time taken for the appearance of rapid voluntary reaction by an individual following a stimulus, either auditory or visual” and the Critical Flickering Fusion Frequency (CFFF) is “the rate at which successively presented light stimuli appear to be steady and continuous”. RT and CFFF are commonly used for the assessment of cognitive functions that are known to influence academic performance. However, data about the exact correlation between these are scarce, particularly in India. This research aimed to study the association between visual RT (VRT), auditory RT (ART) and CFFF and their impact on the academic performance of undergraduate students. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 700 students of Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at a private medical university in South India, during the period from 2015 to 2017. The VRT, ART and CFFF were evaluated, and the best out of three subsequent attempts was recorded. The mean score (in percentage) of the three best marks out of the five internal assessments for the course during each academic year was considered for analysis. The association between the different cognitive tests and the average academic performance was analysed. RESULTS: Female students had faster VRT (n = 345, mean = 243.97, SD = 83.87) than male students (n = 273, mean = 274.86, SD = 96.97) (p = 0.001). VRT and ART had a moderate negative correlation with academic performance (for ART, r = − 0.42, p < 0.001; for VRT; r = − 0.40, p < 0.001). CFFF had a very weak positive correlation with academic performance (r = 0.19, p = 0.01). The only independent predictors of academic performance were RT and gender (Adjusted R(2) = 0.11). CONCLUSION: Although there is a correlation between CFFF and cognitive function, our study showed only a weak correlation between CFFF and academic performance. Female students had faster RTs, and gender was an independent predictor of academic performance. Rather, students with faster RTs appear to have an advantage in academic performance. BioMed Central 2020-12-14 /pmc/articles/PMC7734712/ /pubmed/33317499 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02416-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Prabu Kumar, Archana Omprakash, Abirami Kuppusamy, Maheshkumar K.N., Maruthy B.W.C., Sathiyasekaran P.V., Vijayaraghavan Ramaswamy, Padmavathi How does cognitive function measured by the reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency correlate with the academic performance of students? |
title | How does cognitive function measured by the reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency correlate with the academic performance of students? |
title_full | How does cognitive function measured by the reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency correlate with the academic performance of students? |
title_fullStr | How does cognitive function measured by the reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency correlate with the academic performance of students? |
title_full_unstemmed | How does cognitive function measured by the reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency correlate with the academic performance of students? |
title_short | How does cognitive function measured by the reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency correlate with the academic performance of students? |
title_sort | how does cognitive function measured by the reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency correlate with the academic performance of students? |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7734712/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33317499 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02416-7 |
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