Vigilance: The Problem of Sustained Attention

Book excerpt: Vigilance: The Problem of Sustained Attention deals with vigilance and how the ability to sustain attention is influenced by certain definite conditions of the external and internal environment. Topics covered range from factors affecting vigilance performance to the physiological correlates of vigilance, theories of vigilance performance, and the relationship between arousal and vigilance performance. This volume is comprised of six chapters and begins with an overview of research on vigilance behavior, followed by a discussion on some of the factors affecting vigilance performance, including signal frequency and personality. Subsequent chapters explore physiological correlates of vigilance such as galvanic skin resistance and cortical evoked potentials; reinforcement theory, expectancy theory, and other theories of vigilance performance; and arousal theory and the phenomenon of time error. The final chapter considers some of the conditions that improve vigilance performance, along with the correlation between vigilance and arousal. This book will be of interest to psychologists.