Abstract:
Vigilance is an important component of tasks that are used in a wide variety of settings. Research has demonstrated that performance on these tasks declines with time on watch, a pattern referred to as the vigilance decrement. Many studies have shown that features such as task time, task difficulty, and level of arousal all interact to influence the vigilance decrement. One factor that has been mostly neglected in prior research is the effect of the presence of an observer in a supervisory role during a vigilance task. The purpose for the present investigation was to determine how the presence of different types of observers, affected the performance, workload, and stress of vigilance. It was hypothesized that the presence of a supervisory figure would increase overall performance, and attenuate the vigilance decrement, but this improvement may occur at the cost of increased workload and stress. Results indicated that the percent of false alarm and reaction times decreased in the presence of an observer in a supervisory role. The presence of an observer in tasks that include a vigilance component may thus have positive, as well as, negative effects depending on the dependent measure of interest, and the role of the observer.
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