Ceci n’est pas un walrus: lexical processing in vigilance performance

Abstract

Vigilance, or the ability to sustain attention for extended periods of time, has traditionally been examined using a myriad of symbolic, cognitive, and sensory tasks. However, the current literature indicates a relative lack of empirical investigation on vigilance performance involving lexical processing. To address this gap in the literature, the present study examined the effect of stimulus meaning on vigilance performance (i.e., lure effects). A sample of 126 observers completed a 12-min lexical vigilance task in a research laboratory. Observers were randomly assigned to a standard task (targets and neutral events only) or a lure task (lures, targets, and neutral events presented), wherein lures were stimuli that were categorically similar to target stimuli. A novel analytical approach was utilized to examine the results; the lure groups were divided based on false alarm performance post hoc. Groups were further divided to demonstrate that the presence of lure stimuli significantly affects the decision-making criteria used to assess the performance of lexical vigilance tasks. We also discuss the effect of lure stimuli on measures related to signal detection theory (e.g., sensitivity and response bias).

A Systematic Review of The Semantic Vigilance Literature

“…This includes processing whole words or approximate words, such as text-speak words like "c u soon" (Head, Russell, Dorahy, Neumann, & Helton, 2012;Head, Wilson, Helton, Neumann, Russell, & Shears, 2013b), for meaning for extended periods of time. In semantic vigilance tasks, a critical signal tends to be a key word or phrase, presented either visually or auditorily, that has been defined as a target amongst a set of distractors (Neigel et al, 2018a).…”

Task Engagement and the Vigilance Decrement Revisited: Expanding Upon the Work of Joel S. Warm Using a Semantic Vigilance Paradigm

“…Lures are also categorically or semantically similar to targets but do not meet the target criteria. For example, in the present lure semantic vigilance task, targets include four-legged creatures, such as “cougar,” “squirrel,” or “llama.” Lures, on the other hand, include words that describe creatures that do not have four legs, such as “walrus,” “turkey,” or “flamingo.” Neutral stimuli are not semantically related to lures or targets and include nonanimal objects such as “cube,” “binder,” or “socket.” The inclusion of lures increases the difficulty associated with the semantic vigilance task (Claypoole et al, 2018; Neigel et al, 2018), whereas standard semantic vigilance tasks are easier in that they require only binary distinctions from participants (Fraulini et al, 2017). In the present study, the standard semantic vigilance tasks consisted of 10 targets and 90 neutral stimuli (referred to as “distracters” in Thomson et al, 2016), or 100 events per period.…”

“…However, two participants were removed for being outliers in terms of individual difference measures (i.e., survey malingering). Three participants were removed based on their number of correct detections in the first period on watch (i.e., fewer than seven correct detections in period one; this cutoff was used for data cleaning in Neigel et al, 2018, and Szalma & Teo, 2012). One participant was removed based on excessive distracter and lure false alarms (i.e., 57 false alarms committed in total).…”

“…The distinction between the lure task and semantic task is important in terms of determining task difficulty. Participants tend to perform more poorly and rate the lure semantic task as more frustrating because the targets, four-legged animals, are much more similar to the lure false alarms, non-four-legged animals (Claypoole et al, 2018; Neigel et al, 2018). Furthermore, the lure task requires additional decision-making resources in order to correctly detect targets, thus increasing the difficulty of this task.…”

“…One growing area of research in vigilance, which has previously received limited attention in the broader literature, is semantic vigilance. Semantic vigilance tasks require participants to attend to and process characters, symbols, text-speak words, words, or nonwords over extended periods of time (Claypoole, Neigel, Fraulini, Hancock, & Szalma, 2018; Epling, Russell, & Helton, 2016; Fraulini, Hancock, Neigel, Claypoole, & Szalma, 2017; Head, Russell, Dorahy, Neumann, & Helton, 2012; Neigel, Claypoole, Hancock, Fraulini, & Szalma, 2018; Thomson, Besner, & Smilek, 2016; Yap & Seow, 2014). Semantic vigilance tasks require operators to respond to targets that are semantic or lexical in nature and withhold response to neutral stimuli, which are not semantically representative or related to target signals (Pattamadilok et al, 2017).…”