Performance of university students on random number generation at different rates to evaluate executive functions.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the performance of adult young subjects in a Random Number Generation (RNG) task by controlling the response speed (RS). METHOD Sixty-nine university students of both sexes took part in the experiment (25.05 +/- 6.71 year-old). Participants were alloted into 3 groups which differed in RS rates to generate numbers: 1, 2 and 4 seconds to generate each number. A digital metronomer was used to control RS. Participants were asked to generate 100 numbers. The responses were measured through Evans's RNG Index. RESULTS There were statistically significant differences among the groups [F (3, 68) = 7.120; p <.05]. Differences were localized between 1 and 2 seconds (p = 0.004) and between 1 and 4 seconds (p = 0.006). No differences were observed between 2 and 4 seconds (p = 0.985). CONCLUSION The present results suggest that the response speed in production of random numbers influences the performance of the Random Numbers Generation task.