Questions regarding vigilance and how the human mind reacts to
working on tasks that require their sustained attention for extended periods of
time have long been on psychologists minds. As more research gets done it
becomes apparent that the nature of attention and vigilance is not a simple
and rudimentary as it may initially appear. We all know and have first-hand
experience with working at a task that requires your full attention for an
extended period of time and how that attention and focus seems to fade over
time. The question that really needs to be answered is what the consequences of
that fade and inattention are? How harmful is continuing to participate in a
task once you are already board, after how much time is this true, and many
more.
Three
scientific articles merit a side by side discussion on this topic: "What's
so Boring About Vigilance?" by Mark
W. Scerbo, "Human
Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society" by Donald E. Broadbent and Margaret Gregory, and
"Signal
Detection Theory" by Professor David
Heeger. The first text is a study of vigilance and
boredom. Interestingly enough Scerbo discusses the lack of attention
paid to the concept of "boredom" in psychological studies and
proposes that more research be done to survey the nature of boredom how that
affects what we tend to consider accurate and efficient task performance. He
also questions whether the difficulty of the task has a measurable effect on individuals’
boredom and thus task performance. He states, "As the difficulty of the
task increases, it required additional effort, which then produces higher
levels of boredom" (Scerbo). While that proved to be untrue he
additionally studied whether allowing individuals working on a task to relieve
restlessness would decrease reported boredom, which had much more promising
results. The "Human
Factors: The Journal of theHuman Factors and Ergonomics Society" article focuses on an alternate understanding of why
and in what way individuals fail at tasks once boredom has set in and that
vigilance is waning. Broadbent and Gregory conclude that it has less to do with
inability to detect the signals but rather that as vigilance wanes participants
become less confident in their responses to the signal and are therefore less
likely and more worried about reporting it to the experimenter. The Heeger
article is particularly helpful for understanding this text as it explains
Signal Detection Theory.
Heeger’s text helps facilitate the understanding of that text by
explaining how though it is inevitable that some mistakes will be made in
signal detection, the frequency depends on the amount of "noise." Acquiring
more information makes the strength of the decision makers response
stronger and that reducing "internal noise" would have a similar
effect.
The articles both do a good job posing their questions and arrive
at some really novel and interesting conclusions about the nature of attention
and boredom.
In Scerbo's article I found it difficult to believe that there
would be a distinction between a participant who was unaware of movement that
reduced restlessness and a participant who was made aware of their movement.
Nevertheless, the concept of providing a release for the participants’
restlessness is interesting to me. But I believe that there are other things
that that movement can signify as well. Isn't it also possible that
that "restlessness" has less to do with boredom and literally with
providing some form of arousal to keep focused when the stimulus is not
frequent enough? These readings made me curious about the nature of the actual
perception of the stimulus. I failed to understand what made the stimuli and
tasks lack luster? I was curious if the there was any satisfaction that comes
from the correct identification of the stimuli and whether or not there is any
way that there could be enough arousal and interest gain in a task to
counteract the effects of boredom. Particularly since the point at which
participants are willing to stop their involvement in an experimental task is
way past the point at which they are no longer interested and way past the
point at which they are interested in a task. The conclusions discussed in the "Human Factors" paper seem to offer support for the possibility that there the issue with working on a task for too long is not just boredom and disinterested but rather, possibly, that the time spent working on a task impairs the decision-making process by creating more "internal noise." This would mean that the literal cures the participants should be picking up on are still the same and have not changed, but that their ability to appropriately register them in a conscience way is diminished.
Regardless of what the decreased performances on vigilance tasks has indicated in the past I think the varying opinions in this weeks two larger and experimental readings indicates that there is a lot of research that still needs to be done in this area. Knowing the results of decreased vigilance is just as important as knowing that vigilance decreases. Even more important is to know what the nature of that vigilance change really is. Boredom and diminished arousal are not quite the same thing and the implications of either are quite different.
References:
Broadbent, Donald E, (et. al). "Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society". 1965 7:155.
Heeger, David. "signal Detection Theory". (2003). Department of Psychology, New York UniversityScerbo, Mark W. "What's so Boring About Vigilance?".
