Task Engagement, Attention, and Executive Control

Use of EEG Workload Indices for Diagnostic Monitoring of Vigilance Decrement

“…This strategy is supported by recent research using Transcranial Doppler sonography to measure cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV; Warm, Tripp, Matthews, & Helton, 2012). Declines in CBFV tend to parallel the temporal performance decrement and appear to be controlled by the same workload factors (Matthews, Warm, Reinerman, Langheim, & Saxby, 2010;Shaw, Satterfield, Ramirez, & Finomore, 2013). Righthemisphere CBFV is especially diagnostic, consistent with brain-imaging data suggesting that vigilance is controlled by right-hemisphere circuits (Langner & Eickhoff, 2012), although there is some variation in lateralization with task demands (Shaw et al, 2013).…”

Active and passive fatigue in simulated driving: Discriminating styles of workload regulation and their safety impacts.

“…Fatigued drivers may be effort averse (Brown, 2001), but participants did not simply “give up” on the task. By contrast, vigilance tasks evoke more pronounced changes in coping, including decreases in task focus and increases in avoidance (Matthews, Warm, Reinerman, Langheim, Washburn et al, 2010). …”

“…Goal activation may be especially hard to sustain if the task lacks intrinsic interest, as shown here by the effects of passive fatigue on challenge appraisal, and if the task is highly constrained, as shown by results from vigilance studies (Szalma et al, 2004). Tasks that allow the operator more scope for controlling task demands help to maintain task engagement (Matthews, Warm, Reinerman, Langheim, & Saxby, 2010). …”

“…Nevertheless, the distinct fatigue states observed in Study 1 might impact driver performance and safety differently. Low task engagement has been linked to impairments in vigilance (Matthews, Warm, Reinerman, Langheim, Washburn et al, 2010), visual search (Matthews et al, 2011), and impaired executive control (Matthews & Zeidner, 2012). Distress, which overlaps with anxiety, is also linked to a variety of deficits in attention and working memory (Eysenck & Derakshan, 2011;Matthews & Campbell, 2010).…”

Occupational physiology

“…I did, however, find this chapter's discussion of an inverse U-shaped relationship between physiological stress and cognitive performance a little uncritical and underdeveloped. Those interested in reading more about the relationship between different types of arousal (such as stress) and their effects on cognition should check out Matthews et al (2010).…”