Characteristics of sustaining attention in a gradual-onset continuous performance task

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Continuous performance tasks (CPTs) often show a vigilance decrement, especially with rare targets or prolonged duration.
• The gradual-onset continuous performance task (gradCPT) was developed to study more rapid performance declines.

Purpose of the Study:

• To characterize the time course of a rapid performance decrement in a vigilance task.
• To investigate the influence of stimulus novelty, response rate, and target prevalence on this decrement.
• To test predictions from mindlessness versus attentional resource theories of vigilance.

Main Methods:

• Participants completed the gradCPT, responding to one category of gradually fading visual stimuli and ignoring another.
• Key variables manipulated included stimulus novelty, required response rate, and target prevalence.
• Performance sensitivity was measured across three 8-minute blocks.

Main Results:

• Performance sensitivity declined moderately within and across blocks, indicating a rapid vigilance decrement.
• The decline occurred even with novel stimuli and was not limited to rare targets.
• High response rates significantly impaired sensitivity and increased the decrement, while target prevalence had less impact.
• Performance did not correlate with individual differences in mindfulness, attentional lapses, media multitasking, or working memory span.

Conclusions:

• The rapid and pervasive performance decline in the gradCPT supports attentional resource theories.
• Findings challenge mindlessness accounts, suggesting vigilance decrement is not solely due to stimulus repetitiveness or rarity.
• The gradCPT is a valuable tool for studying the dynamics of attentional resource depletion.