Analyzing Response Time for Assessing the Adaptation Stress in First-Year Healthy Medical Students

Abstract

We tested a hypothesis on whether first-year medical students have shown worse performance due to the new environment and stressful study regimes of medical universities than second-year students. Using simple and complex sensorimotor reaction times (SSMRT, CSMRT) measurements, in the virtual model, healthy male students of both courses were exposed to two randomized order increased visual complexity tasks, as acute stress factors. The means and standard deviations (SD) during SSMRT and CSMRT for both courses were calculated, then we calculated the Pearson correlation coefficient and coefficient of variation: . There were no statistically significant differences between the means, no linear relation between the means and SD and no significant differences between the different CVs. This means well adaptation and less stress experienced by first-year students to the new environment in the stress recognition virtual model, this is explained by no individual differences between students of both courses, their almost equal high mental abilities, and the mobile nervous system of healthy males. It seems the new environment does not negatively affect first-year male students’ performance ability. Our results contribute to a better understanding of education process-related stress and help the discovery of the factors that affect healthy male students’ processing speed.