| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,250,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥750,000)
Fiscal Year 2012: ¥1,430,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥330,000)
Fiscal Year 2011: ¥1,820,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥420,000)
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| Research Abstract |
We propose a new mechanism to account for the vigilance decrement, hypothesizing that it occurs because the cognitive control system fails to maintain active the goal of the vigilance task over prolonged periods of time (goal habituation). Further, we hypothesized that momentarily deactivating this goal (via a switch in tasks) would prevent the activation level of the vigilance goal from ever habituating. We asked observers to perform a visual vigilance task while maintaining four digits in memory. When observers were asked to sporadically recollect the digits during the vigilance task, the vigilance decrement was prevented. Our results present a direct challenge to the pervasive view that vigilance decrements are due to a depletion of attentional resources and provide a tractable mechanism to avert this insidious phenomenon in everyday life.
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