Combating Vigilance Decrements in a Sustained Attention Task: Examination of Two Cognitive Intervention Schedules for a Secondary Task
Abstract
Results from previous studies (St. John & Risser, 2007, 2009) indicate the addition of a simple cognitive secondary task may mitigate vigilance decrements for a sustained attention task involving target acquisition. The effectiveness of the cognitive task increased when its onset was triggered by physiological indicators of inattention. The current study examined the generalizability of this methodology with a few modifications. A no intervention condition was added to provide a baseline and a short perceptual vigilance task (PVT) was added to examine the construct validity of the experimental task (ET). Finally, instead of using physiological indicators to trigger the intervention, a schedule was used that resembled that of the physiological intervention. Although vigilance decrements were observed for both the PVT and ET, only a weak relationship was observed between the two tasks. ET performance was not affected by the cognitive intervention. The apparent poor construct validity of the ET and failure to replicate previous findings cast doubts on the robustness of the cognitive intervention for mitigating performance decrements on real-world tasks, especially when its onset is not linked with physiological indicators of inattention.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA583727
Entities
People
- Guy A. French
- Thomas R. Carretta
Organizations
- Air Force Research Laboratory