Periodic performance feedback and cognitive ability interactively mitigate the vigilance decrement

We investigated the effects of periodic performance feedback across three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to either a feedback condition, in which there was periodic performance feedback (n = 302), or to a control condition, which received no feedback (n = 293). Whereas the control condition demonstrated a large vigilance decrement, even over a brief task duration, participants in the feedback condition performed both better overall and demonstrated a significantly shallower decrement. Experiment 2 (n = 103) was a preregistered replication with an extended task duration, and we directly replicated the findings. Experiment 3 was another preregistered experiment (n = 283), in which we examined three conditions with the extended duration: feedback for the entire task, feedback for only the first half of the task, and no feedback for the entire duration. The conditions did not differ in performance. However, in a post hoc cross-experimental analysis, we discovered significant moderation of the feedback effect via fluid intelligence. The findings have implications for how we view vigilance as a cognitive construct, why it typically wanes with time, and how it may be stabilized. All data and materials are publicly available on the Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/fzd2h/ ).