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Challenges to the Mindlessness Model of Vigilance through Signal Regularity

2003; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 47; Issue: 13 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/154193120304701317

2169-5067

William S. Helton, Todd D. Hollander, Joel S. Warm, Gerald Matthews, William N. Dember, Matthew Wallaart, Gerald Beauchamp, Raja Parasuraman,

EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces

Robertson et al. (1997) have proposed that detection failures in vigilance tasks result from a “mindless” withdrawal of attentional effort from the monitoring assignment. To explore that view, they modified the traditional vigilance task in which observers make button-press responses to signify the detection of rarely occurring critical signals to one in which button-press responses acknowledge frequently occurring non-signal events and response-withholding signifies signal detection. This modification is designed to promote a mindless withdrawal of attentional effort from the task through routinization. The present study challenges the validity of the mindlessness model by showing that with both types of tasks observers can utilize subtle regularities in the temporal structure of critical signal appearances to develop expectations about the time course of those appearances that affect performance efficiency. Such expectations enhance performance with the traditional vigilance task but degrade performance with the modified task.