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Although it is sometimes stated that there is a danger of a loss of vigilance in supervisory tasks where the main task is monitoring, there appears to be no experimental research on the vigilance decrement in complex realistic tasks. In this paper we report an experiment on the detection of dynamic faults in a rather complex microworld, PASTEURISER. An overall decrement in target detection was found, but no vigilance decrement as a function of time during the first 30 minutes or 1 hour. Even when the system was made increasingly simple no vigilance decrement curves were found, although it was possible to replicate Mackworth's original experiment with a simulated clock. We conclude that at least for some kinds of dynamic signals there is no progressive loss of vigilance during the fiurst half hour to an hour of watchkeeping tasks.

The accelerated progress being made with interactive devices (such as screens, cameras, joysticks and tangible objects) has triggered the development of new interaction methods for applications (e.g., body language, haptic feedback, etc.). Video games and Serious Games are being played on increasingly innovative peripherals (e.g., Kinect, Wii Balance Board). These devices have generated new, intuitive forms of Human-Computer Interaction that are completely changing our usages. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of gaming technologies and suggest a framework for characterizing the role that screens play in these devices. This framework differentiates between the various gaming elements (the gamers, the interactive devices and the entertaining and gamified applications). This framework is a tool to analyze the effects of device choice and configuration. This paper presents an evaluation of the characterization of 15 serious games. This evaluation will provide a glimpse of the potentialities of the framework with respect to suggested criteria as well as of the trends and potential developments in interactive media.

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