[The psychomotor test for research of eye-hand coordination at performance of monotonous activity on tracking target]

Visual-motor coordination is necessary for successful performance of everyday activities. Many tasks, such as driving or operating devices in the workplace, require a variety of coordination patterns with different levels of compatibility between the eyes and the hand. The psychomotor test was developed which makes it possible to analyze visual-motor coordination disorders caused by a decrease in the level of wakefulness. A small circular target (14 mm in diameter) was moving with a low constant velosity (12 mm/s) in a circular trajectory (80 mm in diameter) with a period of 20 s. Subjects were instructed to keep the mouse-driven cursor inside a target, overstepping the limits of the moving target was considered as an error. To test the attention level, an additional stimulus was introduced which appeared for 3 seconds with an interval of 15 to 40 s. When the stimulus appeared, it was required to touch it with the cursor and click the mouse button. Cursor trajectories have a temporal resolution of 120 Hz. Eye movements were recorded with a PC-based Eyegaze Development System (LC Technologies, USA) measuring corneal reflectance with a collection rate of 120 Hz. Monotonous character of the test performance induced drowsiness and led to errors 25-30 minutes after the beginning of the experiment. Changes in physiological vigilance level was evaluated with EEG recording. Analysis of the dynamic characteristics of smooth and saccadic eye movements and hand movements showed their high sensitivity to a decrease in efficiency of operator's activity caused by a drop in the level of wakefulness. It is suggested that further development of this approach to measuring eye-hand coordination will promote working out a contactless method for the express diagnostics of the critical levels of drowsiness as well as for the definition of professional characteristics of an operator.