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Beyond Detection Rate: Understanding the Vigilance Decrement Using Signal Detection Theory (Skinner & Giesbrecht, In Press)

The vigilance decrement has been classically characterized as the decline in performance across time as individuals continuously attend to a task. Errors during these periods of degraded performance are often collectively characterized as failures of attention. Theoretically, using a single construct, such as attention, to describe impaired performance obscures what is likely a range of behaviors. Methodologically, the classic characterization of the vigilance decrement relies upon declines in detection rate, a binary measure that is unable to characterize performance beyond a single dimension. This is a critical issue for the study of vigilance because detection rate can be impacted both by changes in sensitivity and response criterion. Commonly used tasks do not allow for the reliable computation of these metrics because they elicit a low number of false alarms or because they introduce confounding response demands. To address these shortcomings, we propose the use of a paradigm amenable to the application of the signal detection framework, which permits the reliable and isolated investigation of the vigilance decrement across multiple measures.

Physically activated modes of attentional control (Giesbrecht, Bullock, & Garrett, In Press)

As we navigate through the day, our attentional control processes are constantly challenged by changing sensory information, goals, expectations, and motivations. At the same time, our bodies and brains are impacted by changes in global physiological state that can influence attentional processes. Based on converging lines of evidence from brain recordings in physically active humans and nonhumans, we propose a new framework incorporating at least two physically activated modes of attentional control in humans: altered gain control and differential neuromodulation of control networks. We discuss the implications of this framework for understanding a broader range of states and cognitive functions studied both in the laboratory and in the wild.

Predicting attentional lapses using response time speed in continuous performance tasks (Shelat, Schooler, & Giesbrecht, 2024)

Failures of sustained attention, including lapses and mind-wandering, have serious consequences on cognitive task performance. In recent years, real-time triggering methods have been used to isolate periods of optimal and suboptimal attention based on patterns of response times in monotonous continuous performance tasks. In a closed-loop fashion, these triggering designs reduce the need for retrospective processing to identify periods of poor attention by using simple intrasubject response time boundaries to trigger events based on inferred attentional state. In the current review, we first discuss studies that used principal component analysis to identify response patterns that precede both task errors and phenomenological reports of mind-wandering. Then, we review designs that used real-time triggering conditions to reinforce the relationship between lapsing and memory encoding. Finally, we describe important next steps to generalize the utility of the triggering procedure across populations, validate lapse countermeasures, and shine light on the limited human capacity to maintain vigilance.

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