Unit 4 Sustained attention Flashcards
What is vigilance (sustained attention)
Vigilance is a state of readiness to detect and respond to small, infrequent changes in the environment over prolonged periods
What is a common decline in performance during vigilance tasks?
Vigilance decrement, which is the decline in performance over time
What are characteristics of vigilance tasks?
Tasks involve detecting rare and unpredictable target events, and performance quality declines over time due to the fragile nature of sustained attention
What is Mackworth’s Clock Task?
A task developed to determine optimal radar monitoring durations during WWII, where participants monitor a clock face for rare double step movements.
How does performance change in Mackworth’s Clock Task over time?
Performance declines after 30-60 minutes, stabilising at a lower level, but breaks can improve performance.
What are behavioural indicators of vigilance decrement?
Reduced accuracy and increased reaction time in detecting targets.
What is the focus of Signal Detection Theory (SDT)?
SDT focused on sensitivity (ability to detect a target) and the decision criterion (threshold for deciding whether a stimulus is a target)
What are the 4 decision outcomes in STD
Hits, Misses, False alarms and correct rejections
How do decision criteria affect vigilance?
Over time, participants often adopt a more conservative criterion, leading to a higher likelihood of misses due to the rarity of targets
How does expectation affect vigilance task performance?
Being warned about an imminent target improves detection, especially when the warning occurs 0.5-1 second before the stimulus.
What is the Yerkes-Dodson Law?
The law suggest that performance peaks at moderate arousal level and declines with excessive stress or insufficient activation.
How do breaks influence vigilance?
Breaks can improve performance by resetting arousal levels
