This week there was a larger than usual amount of direct debate about the topic of vigilance decrement The experimenters attempted to classify vigilance decrements according to the manner in which it affectes the individual, possible causes of the decrement and even ways the decrement can be avoided. However, as soon as these distinctions are made it becomes clear that there is a lot of potential conflict and disagreement. The main conflict is between thinking of a vigilance decrement as a Global Habituation Issues or as a Mindedness Issues. These two theories set a tone for the type of solution or possible help one might be able to extend an individual experiencing a vigilance decrement. At the same time it is possible that there is more to be gained by examining vigilance as a sequential set of "states."
Researchers, Allan Cheyne, Grayden Solman, Jonathan Carriere, and Daniel Smilek, published an article in 2009 entitled "Anatomy of an error: A bidirectional state model of task engagement/disengagement and attention-related errors." Both the title and the content of this article are very clear. The team of psychologists worked to create what they call a "three state attentional model of engagement/disengagement" (Cheyne et. al., 98). This is essentially a mode of classifying vigilance decrements. These researchers believe there is a trend among type of decrement. This is not a reference to the cause of the decrement per se but rather a comment on the quality of the weighing attention.
The three stages they propose are illustrated in the chart below.
Cheyne et. al. are very clear that these there stages are discrete. One is one of the 3 stages never somewhere in between. Yet, there are two features of these theoretical stages that are particularly intriguing First, experimental research as indicated that a person who falls into one of the states is much more biased to fall into or to have been in one of the others. This points us to the second interesting feature. Much in the same way light is both a particle and a wave, these stages are both discrete and lie on a continuum. A person completing a task will go through the stages in order starting with the first and -possibly - making it to the last. The shift may be quick but it must exist. The hypothesis that the three states are sequentially related is known as "Temporal Relations and Transitions Between States" (Cheyne, 103).
The experimenters had three measures associated with each of the measures (included in the third column of the chart above. Each calculable measure is in a sense a proxy for the experimenters expectation and theories regarding it's respective state.
A final interesting and particularly noteworthy point that these researchers made is the "Bidrectionality" of the wandering mind. This theory simply states that it is possible for a wandering mind to still be attending to a task that is being worked on. Even if the individual completely a task is not attending to the item or specific action which they are performing, it is possible that they are simply problem solving or perhaps even thinking ahead. A wandering mind is therefore not always a problem. It becomes problamatic when the item or issue being attended to is incredibly important. In these cases a wandering mind, even in the interest of the task, may be incredible unhelpful (like driving a car while trying to figure out which exit is best for you to get off at.
This issue struck me as particularly novel and facinating in terms of my previous study in the subject. The question of what the participants attention has been slipping towards has just not been a matter of question so far. Perhaps not everything that we've seen has been a vigilance decrement but more specifically problem solving with the intention of being vigilant?
Atsunori Ariga, and Alejandro Lleras' article "Brief and rare mental ‘‘breaks’’ keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements" and William Helton and Paul Russell's article "Brief mental breaks and content-free cues may not keep you focused" literally respond to the same issues. Both sets of researchers are trying to identify possible solutions to the vigilance decrememtn we are at this point sure exists and occurs consistently. The main issues that Helton et. al. have with Ariga et. al. is that they believe there is a major confound in the experiment; mental load.
In short, Ariga looks at vigilance decrement as a failure of the Cognitive control system NOT a brain resource replenishing issues. the cognitive control system must struggles to keep the target looked for in the vigilance task active for extended periods of times. This is essentially known as the Global Habituation Theory. To test this theory Ariga et. al. had 4 group complete a task of detecting a short line when the general event was a longer line.
1) The control simply performed the vigilance task.
2) The no switch condition memorized 4 numbers at the onset of the experiment performed the vigilance task and was then asked to identify the memorize numbers once the vigilance task was completed.
3) The switch condition memorized the 4 numbers, began the vigilance task, and was probed through out the vigilance task about the numbers memorized.
4) The Digit Ignored group saw the same task as group 3, but memorized no numbers and was told to ignore the probing number signals that reoccured throughout the task.
Though both articles make valid points it is difficult to really weigh the results if one it to truse the statistical analysis that Helton has dont on the Ariga article. At the same time it seems that both researchers could take a page out of Cheyne's book and consider that the decrement that their participants are experiencing is not unnecessary. That perhaps mental load is not the cause of vigilance decrement but one of the results. Yes, there is the obvious chang ein mental load with a task that requires more memory storage and other similar factors, but if an individual allocates memory, space, and time to try and analyze their own decrements, like in a Stage 1 or Stage 2, they are increasing their own mental load. Perhaps it is impossible to really monitor when and if this occurs. Furthermore, the consequences of claiming that only reducing memory load is a valid solution to memory load induced vigilance decrements is to say that there is an entire field of people who's work cannot be made easier since decreasing memory load is not always, if ever, a real- life solution to a problem with a wandering mind.
References:
Ariga, Atsunori., Lleras, Alejandro. "Brief and rare mental 'breaks' keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements". (2011). Cognition. 118: 439-443.
Cheyne, J. Allan., Solman, Grayden J.F., Carriere, Jonathan S.A., Smilek, Daniel. "Anatomy of an error: A bidirectional state model of task engagement/disengagement and attention-related errors." (2009). Cognition. 111: 98-113.
Helton, William S., Russell, Paul N. "Brief mental breaks and content-free cues may not keep you focused." Brain Research. (2012). 219: 37-46.
