Presentation
Isolating the Effects of a Rest Break on Vigilance Performance
SessionPP2: Impacts on Vigilance
DescriptionBrief task breaks have been found to ameliorate the vigilance decrement. Under a classic resource overload model, this effect is thought to reflect restoration of perceptual sensitivity. To test this assumption, we fit psychometric curves to data from a sensory vigilance task, checking for changes in sensitivity, response bias, attentional lapse rate, and positive guess rate. Participants completed five 4-min blocks in a vigilance monitoring task, with a 1-min break between blocks 4 and 5. Data gave evidence of conservative shifts in cutoff and increases in mindless responding across blocks of trials, but gave no evidence for either a decrease in sensitivity over the first several blocks of trials or an increase in sensitivity after the rest break. Overall, results gave no indication that a brief rest ameliorates the vigilance decrement. Findings echo recent research indicating a need to revisit the evidence for a resource overload model of vigilance decrement.
Event Type
Lecture
TimeWednesday, October 21st1:50pm - 2:10pm PDT
Location