Vigilance Overload Measured by Computerized Mackworth Clock Test

TL;DR

This study used a computerized Mackworth Clock Test to measure vigilance levels in students, revealing that vigilance decreases as the number of consecutive stimuli increases, indicating an upper limit of sustained attention.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence of vigilance decline with increased task demands in high school students using a computerized test.

Findings

Vigilance remains stable over 10 trials at around 79%.

Success rate drops from 90% at 2 jumps to 70% at 7 jumps.

Vigilance limit is around 4 stimuli per minute.

Abstract

This paper studied the change of vigilance based on stimulus coming consecutively using the computerized version of the Mackworth Clock Test run from PsyToolkit website. 7 participants (16.57 +/-1 years old, 2 males), performed 10 consecutive trials in order to measure whether or not it is a realistic goal for high school students to display the level of vigilance expected from them in class. Success percentages were calculated by dividing the number of correct jumps to the total number of jumps. The results indicated that while the average success percentage for all subjects remained relatively stable over the 10 trials (79% +/-7%), success percentages drop relatively as the number of jumps increase. Success rate dropped from 90% (2 jumps) to 70% (7 jumps). We conclude that there is an upper limit of vigilance that should be expected from students when they are exposed to more than 4 randomly occurring attention requiring task within a minute.