Finding vigilance through complex explanations for complex phenomena.

Abstract

Replies to comments by Guastello (see record 2014-01475-008) on the original article by the current author (see record 2012-28202-001) regarding the problem of iatrogenically created psychological phenomena. Guastello offered a sympathetic, meaningful, and potentially explanatory account of several of the issues raised in the recent article. The purpose of this reply is to evaluate his offered hypotheses and to see where this intriguing line of development might lead in terms of theoretical and practical understanding of the critical real-world capacity of vigilance. What Guastello correctly identified is that vigilance, or more correctly, the application of human sustained attention to an external task, represents one facet of what Freeman (1948) identified generally as the "energetic" dimensions of human behavioral capacity.

On the Nature of Vigilance

“…Immersive video games, movies and television shows, leisure avocations, and more intellectual vocations all demonstrate that the sustenance of attention need not necessarily be either problematic or arduous (but see Warm, Parasuraman, & Matthews, 2008). Indeed, a number of recent studies have been directed to evaluating and testing this explicit proposition provided by Hancock (2013Hancock ( , 2014b concerning the etiology and mitigation of the decrement. These studies have shown that monitoring more meaningful stimulus displays does not lead to the traditional vigilance decrement function (see Greenlee et al, 2015;Szalma, Schmidt, Teo, & Hancock, 2014;Thompson & Parasuraman, 2012).…”

When and Why Threats Go Undetected

“…Although some recent laboratory-based studies favor resource theory as the explanation for the vigilance decrement (Helton & Russell, 2011, the debate is as yet unresolved (Warm, Finomore, Vidulich, & Funke, 2015; see also Thomson, Besner, & Smilek, 2015). Whether the decrement occurs similarly in workplace settings is also a subject of ongoing debate (e.g., Hancock, 2014;Mackie, 1987;Parasuraman & Giambra, 1991;Parasuraman, Warm, & Dember, 1987;Pigeau, Angus, O'Neill, & Mack, 1995). Airports internationally have endeavored to combat the potential mindlessness of baggage screening through the implementation of Threat Image Projection (TIP) technology.…”