2012 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
The dishabituation method to prevent vigilance decrements
| Project/Area Number |
23830084
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Experimental psychology
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| Research Institution | Rissho University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2011 – 2012
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| Keywords | 注意 |
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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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