Can sustained attention adapt to prior cognitive effort? An evidence from experimental study.

Abstract

According to the limited resources paradigm, prior cognitive effort should result in a temporary depletion of available cognitive resources (Kahneman, 1973). Some recent evidence however has proved an opposite effect of increment in the availability of cognitive resources as a function of prior cognitive effort. In the current study the follow-up effect of cognitive effort on sustained attention was examined. Eighty-nine participants took part in the experiment. The cognitive load was manipulated between subjects using three versions of the DIVA Task (intensive warming-up condition, moderate warming-up condition and the control one). Following the experimental manipulation, the availability of cognitive resources during vigilance task was checked. Some significant effects of experimental manipulation were observed. First, in the context of overall task performance, subjects from the intensive warming-up condition obtained lower total errors rate than subjects from the control one. Some moderate effect of cognitive warming-up on time-on-task performance was also observed, although it was isolated to false alarms rate. Those results, tentatively suggesting the occurrence of the cognitive warming-up effect in vigilance performance, are then discussed. PSYCINFO CLASSIFICATION CATEGORIES AND CODES: 2300 Human Experimental Psychology: 2346 Attention.