TOUCH SENSITIVE SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIORAL TESTING AND EVALUATION

摘要

Portable operatively simple touch screen apparatus uses testing methods and systems that are free of age and language constraints include special signal processing techniques that provide a temporal resolution highly sensitive for probing cognitive function. The embodiments include or make use of one or more modules implemented at least partially in a set of instructions in software and configured to measure user reaction times to visual stimulus on a touch screen device having a capacitive sensor touch-sensitive surface and a detector of audio waves resulting from touch on the touch-sensitive surface. The modules employ recordation of acoustic vibrations resulting from a user's touching a target location on the touch screen surface spaced from a touched starting location on that surface, in one embodiment, to measure temporal response to a visual stimulus placed at the target location.

主权项

1. A method of measuring user reaction times to visual stimulus on a portable touch screen device having a capacitive touch-sensitive surface with a touch reporting mechanism, and one or more modules at least partially implemented in software, said modules being responsive to a user start command to
a) open a time log file on receipt of said start command, b) generate a visual stimulus at a first location on the touch screen surface for touch by a user, c) generate at least one second visual stimulus at a second location on the touch screen surface spaced from said first location and write time of generation of the second visual stimulus to a log file signifying such time of generation (Tv), d) receive notification of capacitance sensed touch and coordinates of such sensed touch and write timer time to a log file (Tc) signifying time of such sensed touch and also write the sensed touch coordinates location to a file, e) remove the second visual stimulus from the touch screen surface, steps b)-f) comprising a single trial, f) repeat steps b)-e) until a set of trials signified by a predetermined number of capacitance sensed touches (Tc) of said second location attains a preset number, then cease repeating steps b)-e), and close the log file onto a computer readable medium which may be in said device or in communication with said device, and g) in a computing device, which may be the same as said portable device or another computing device having one or more modules implemented at least partially in software and to which the data from said portable device is transmitted, determine said user reaction time (RT) by
1) opening the log files from step f)2) reading the data from the log file corresponding to Tc for each trial3) calculating uncorrected response time: RTuncorrected=Tc−Tv for each trial,4) calculating response time corrected for accuracy: RTaccuracy corrected=RTuncorrected−Kc, where Kc is an empirically measured constant corresponding to the average latency of the capacitive touch reporting mechanism, and5) writing the accuracy corrected response time to an output.