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While the effects of "knowledge of results" on human performance have been intensively studied, the role of chis variable in human monitoring has not been fully explored. In view of the practical imporcance of vigilance research and the need to maintain a high level of detection in the human operator, this neglect is somewhat surprising.Although Mackworth ( 1 9 5 0 ) , Baker ( 1958), and McCormack (1959) have all shown that knowledge of results improves performance on visual vigilance tasks, it might be argued that knowledge of resulcs given in the form of verbal feedback from E, by means of colored lights, or by illuminated panels constituted, in one sense of che word, "additional signals" and thus confounded the effects of frequency and arousal.In another intriguing study of knowledge of results, Loeb and Schmidt (1960) found suggestive evidence that false knowledge of resulcs also improves S's performance on auditory vigilance tasks.The purpose of the present smdy was, therefore, twofold: first, to repeat the previous work on knowledge of results, providing an additional control for possible arousal effects and second, to determine whether "false knowledge" of results is as effective as "true knowledge'' in improving performance on a simple visual vigilance task.

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