The new research, published this week in the journal PLoS One, was large, simple and highly revealing. Between 1988 and 1994, researchers gave 5,134 Americans adults under 60 a very straightforward test of reaction time: The participants, all part of a large federal study of American nutrition and health, were seated at a computer and told to push a button immediately upon seeing a 0 on the screen in front of them. There was no practice period; a participant's average over 50 trials was computed, and he or she had just a few seconds between those 50 trials.
The researchers measured the range of reaction times across the group. They computed a "standard deviation" -- a unit of measure that marks the extent to which an individual's performance departs from the group's average. They took note of the "variability" of each participants' response time -- how widely reaction time fluctuated in the course of their 50 tries.
Then they waited close to 15 years to see who in this relatively young group of Americans would die, and of what.
Because the participants had been recruited for an ongoing study of health and nutrition, the researchers had a wealth of health-related information on them. They could use that data to adjust for risk factors such as age, gender and ethnicity.
In all, 378 of the participants died during a follow-up period that averaged 14.6 years -- 104 of cardiovascular deaths and 84 of cancer deaths.
When the researchers -- all from the University of Edinborough -- went back to compare participants' response times with their likelihood of being among the dead, they detected a clear pattern: for those with slow reaction times, each standard deviation that separated an individual's performance from the group's average increased his or her likelihood of dying by 25%.
Those who were slower than the group average by four standard deviations were twice as likely as those whose performance was average to have died over the 15-year follow-up period.
High variability in response time was also linked to a higher risk of death in the study. But those with high variability in response-time also tended to be the same people who response time was slower-than-average.
The authors noted that response time and variability were as powerful at predicting the likelihood of death as was another influential risk factor for death: smoking.
Comment: Regarding the smoking reference, those researches should know better because it is research that proved the following:
The devious plan of anti-smoking campaigns to control people and stop them from using their brain
Let's All Light Up!
5 Health Benefits of Smoking
Nicotine Lessens Symptoms Of Depression In Nonsmokers
Nicotine helps Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Patients
Brain Researchers: Smoking increases intelligence
Response speed was much more likely to predict cardiovascular death than it was to predict death by cancer. This suggests that long before a stroke or heart attack fells its victim, the creeping progress of narrowing arteries, inefficient blood flow and weakening hearts might be evident as a slowing of response time, the study authors wrote.
Wow. Talk about obvious. Good thing we have science to verify every little piece of obvious knowledge.
This just in, people see better during the day, on average, than they see during the night time.
A new study has revealed that dehydration is more prevalent in those who don't drink as much water.
In a groundbreaking new meta-study, beer consumption has been shown to increase the likelihood of becoming intoxicated on the same days as drinking, but little correlation between beer drinking and intoxication is shown on days when beer consumption is low.
I can do this too, see?