Presentation
Exploring the Effects of Background Sound on Performance in a Vigilance Task
DescriptionVigilance tasks require sustained attention to detect infrequent critical signals among neutral stimuli. Performance on these tasks declines over time, known as the vigilance decrement. Two theoretical perspectives attempt to explain this decrement: the underload hypothesis, which attributes the decrement to boredom and task disengagement, and the overload hypothesis, which suggests cognitive resource depletion over time leads to worsening performance. The current study investigated the impact of background sound on vigilance performance to contrast the underload and overload hypotheses. Participants completed a vigilance task in one of four conditions: silence, white noise, instrumental music, and lyrical music. This study replicated the typical vigilance decrement across all conditions and found a significant sound by time on watch interaction, such that response times increased most in the silence condition, followed by lyrical music, instrumental music, and white noise. These results suggest lyrical music was the most distracting background noise, leading to the worst performance.The findings of this study partially support the overload hypothesis, suggesting that the additional demand of processing lyrical music depletes cognitive resources more quickly, impacting vigilance performance. This study contributes to understanding the cognitive processes underlying vigilance tasks and the effects of auditory stimulation on performance.
Event Type
Lecture
TimeThursday, October 16th3:40pm - 4pm CDT
LocationGrand Hall L
Perception and Performance
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