Brynn Ahonen, Amanda Carlson, Charles Dunham, Emma Getty, & Kaylee J. Kosmowski

This study investigates the effects of time-of-day and practice on four psychomotor and visual attention tasks available in the PEBL test battery: the pursuit rotor task, compensatory tracking task, match-to-sample task, and TOAV task. Participants were tested in up to twelve consecutive sessions, in order to determine a relationship between student’s cognitive abilities, tiredness due to time of day, and practice performing each task. There were no reliable time-of-day or practice effects for pursuit rotor or match-to-sample tasks. However, there was a reliable practice effect for the compensatory tracking task for both the mean time on the outer ring, and mean offset, but no reliable time-of-day effect. TOAV showed a reliable effect of time-of-day, but no reliable practice effects.