The Vigilance Decrement Reflects Limitations in Effortful Attention, Not Mindlessness

Abstract

Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, and Yiend (1997) proposed that the decline in performance efficiency over time in vigilance tasks (the vigilance decrement) is characterized by "mindlessness" or a withdrawal of attentional effort from the monitoring assignment. We assessed that proposal using measures of perceived mental workload (NASA-TLX) and stress (Dundee Stress State Questionnaire). Two types of vigilance task were employed: a traditional version, wherein observers made button-press responses to signify detection of rarely occurring critical signals, and a modified version, developed by Robertson et al. to promote mindlessness via routinization, wherein button-press responses acknowledged frequently occurring neutral stimulus events and response withholding signified critical signal detection. The vigilance decrement was observed in both tasks, and both tasks generated equally elevated levels of workload and stress, the latter including cognitions relating to performance adequacy. Vigilance performance seems better characterized by effortful attention (mindfulness) than by mindlessness. Actual or potential applications of this research include procedures to reduce the information-processing demand imposed by vigilance tasks and the stress associated with such tasks.

Predicting Changes in Cognitive Performance Using Heart Rate Variability

“…On the other hand, if we consider that CS I has positive correlations with the level of sympathetic nerve activity in a participant, it suggests that higher increases of sympathetic nerve activity might also affect decreases of cognitive performance. This corresponds to results obtained in related work, which indicated that decreases inperformance in vigilance tasks seems better characterized by effortful attention (the so-called "overload"), which is correlated with sympathetic nerve activity, than by "underload" [37]. Therefore, it seems to be necessary to use HRV features correlated with both sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve activity for predicting changes in cognitive performance.…”

Limited Cognitive Resources Explain a Trade-Off between Perceptual and Metacognitive Vigilance

“…Research on the perceptual vigilance decrement has suggested that the decrement is caused by the depletion of limited cognitive resources (Grier et al, 2003;Helton et al, 2005;Helton and Warm, 2008;Warm et al, 2008). Experiment 2 of the present study suggests that regions of aPFC whose anatomical structure has previously been associated with metacognitive sensitivity in visual tasks (Fleming et al, 2010;McCurdy et al, 2013) may partially instantiate the resources supporting perceptual vigilance, since larger gray matter volume in these regions is associated with smaller declines in perceptual sensitivity.…”

“…Research has suggested that limited cognitive resources (Kahneman, 1973;Matthews et al, 2000;Wickens, 2002) become depleted as a vigil progresses, and so the vigilance decrement is better accounted for by resource exhaustion than by mindlessness or task disengagement (Grier et al, 2003;Helton et al, 2005;Helton and Warm, 2008;. Consistent with the resource depletion account, the vigilance decrement is exacerbated by increasing task demands such as stimulus degradation, rate of stimulus presentation, and memory load (See et al, 1995) and is associated with depleted ratings of energetic arousal, elevated reports of stress, and declines in cerebral blood flow velocity .…”

Reprint of: Minimizing noise in pediatric task-based functional MRI; Adolescents with developmental disabilities and typical development

“…We also found significant increases in motion in all planes (See Table 2) and also in the first derivative of head displacement in block 4 compared with block 1 (calculated using AFNI's enorm function which calculates how much the head moved in one TR with respect to previous TR; ADHD: t(71)=3.76, p=0.01; TD: (t(84)=2.11, p=0.02). The sustained attention and vigilance literature has demonstrated evidence for a decline in attention and performance over time; for example, Helton et al (2005) found a significant decline in attention occurring following about 30 minutes of performing a simulated air traffic control paradigm and Grier et al (2003) found a steady decline in performance over time (measured in 10 minute intervals up to 50 minutes of task time) in their vigilance task. Recent evidence from our laboratory suggests that children with ADHD may increase their levels of activity as a compensatory mechanism to modulate attention and arousal (Hartanto et al, 2016).…”