Brief and rare mental “breaks” keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements

@article{Ariga2010BriefAR,
  title={Brief and rare mental “breaks” keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements},
  author={Atsunori Ariga and Alejandro Lleras},
  journal={Cognition},
  year={2010},
  volume={118},
  pages={439-443}
}
View on Elsevier
news.illinois.edu
151 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
15
Background Citations
76
Methods Citations
9
Results Citations
11

Figures and Tables from this paper

151 Citations

Disrupting monotony while increasing demand: benefits of rest and intervening tasks on vigilance

In the experiments presented here, we examined the impact of intervening tasks on the vigilance decrement. In Experiment 1 participants either (a) continuously performed a visuospatial vigilance…

Disrupting monotony while increasing demand: benefits of rest and intervening tasks on vigilance

Both taking a rest break and performing the intervening task were found to alleviate the vigilance decrement in response times, and Disruptions to task monotony (even if cognitively demanding), can alleviate the vigilantes.

Characteristics of Sustaining Attention in a Gradual-Onset Continuous Performance Task

The rapid and pervasively observed decline in performance is consistent with attentional resource theories of vigilance decrement and was not restricted to situations when target events were rare and the stimuli were repetitive.

A new semantic vigilance task: vigilance decrement, workload, and sensitivity to dual-task costs

This research investigated whether the vigilance decrement was found in a new abbreviated semantic discrimination vigilance task, and whether there was a performance decrement in said vigilance task when paired with a word recall task, as opposed to performed individually.

Does Depleting Self-Control Result in Poorer Vigilance Performance?

The results provide evidence against resource-control theory and self-control as an explanation for vigilance, and provide further support for cognitive resource theory as the predominant explanation for Vigilance impairments.

Rest Is Still Best

Overall, the vigilance sensitivity decrement appears to be due to the recurring use of particular cognitive resources, and resource theorists should explore this more extensively in the future.

The Effect of Disruptions on Vigilance

The goal habituation model of vigilance proposed by Ariga and Lleras (2011) posits that it is possible to attenuate the vigilance decrement (the decline in performance that occurs with time-on-task)…

‘I need a break’: the effect of choice of rest break duration on vigilance

The findings suggest that resource theory is a plausible explanation for the vigilance decrement and that providing a choice in rest break length changes the operator’s criterion following the break.

The Abbreviated Vigilance Task and Its Attentional Contributors

It is suggested that cognitive control is not a predominant factor, at least for the abbreviated vigilance task, and attentional mechanisms and stress states affecting performance on the abbreviate vigilance task change over time.

Anticipation of Monetary Reward Can Attenuate the Vigilance Decrement

Vigilance decrements were reduced in the anticipate-large-loss condition of a 10-minute gradual onset continuous performance task, suggesting that the looming possibility of a large loss can attenuate the vigilance decrement and that this attenuation may occur most consistently after sufficient task experience.
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 33 REFERENCES

Interactions between endogenous and exogenous attention during vigilance

It is demonstrated that exogenous attention enhances perceptual sensitivity during vigilance performance, but that this effect is dependent on observers’ being able to predict the timing of stimulus events.

The absent mind: further investigations of sustained attention to response

Signal salience and the mindlessness theory of vigilance.

Harnessing the wandering mind: The role of perceptual load

Experience sampling during fMRI reveals default network and executive system contributions to mind wandering

An fMRI study that used experience sampling to provide an online measure of mind wandering during a concurrent task revealed a number of crucial aspects of the neural recruitment associated with mind wandering, highlighting the value of combining subjective self-reports with online measures of brain function for advancing the understanding of the neurophenomenology of subjective experience.

`Oops!': Performance correlates of everyday attentional failures in traumatic brain injured and normal subjects

The Role of a Right Fronto-Parietal Network in Cognitive Control: Common Activations for Cues-to-Att

A similar network of right dorsolateral prefrontal and inferior parietal regions was active for both fMRI and GO/NOGO task, suggesting that this network, commonly activated for response inhibition, may subserve a more general cognitive control process involved in allocating top-down attentional resources.

An electronic knot in the handkerchief: “Content free cueing” and the maintenance of attentive control

Abstract Rapid changes in consumer technology mean that many of us now carry a range of automated cueing devices. The value of organisers and pagers in cueing specific to-be-remembered items,…

Cognitive control, goal maintenance, and prefrontal function in healthy aging.

Older adults showed reduced activation during the cue and delay period but increased activation at the time of the probe, particularly on high-interference trials, consistent with the hypothesis that age-related impairments in goal maintenance abilities cause a compensatory shift in older adults from a proactive to a reactive cognitive control strategy.

On the Control of Control: The Role of Dopamine in Regulating Prefrontal Function and Working Memory

An Important aspect of cognitive control is the ability to appropriately select, update, and maintain contextual information related to behavioral goals, and to me this information to coordinate…