Loss of vigilance may lead to impaired performance in various applied settings including military operations, transportation, and industrial inspection. Individuals differ considerably in sustained attention, but individual differences in vigilance have proven to be hard to predict. The dependence of vigilance on workload factors is consistent with a resource model of sustained attention. Thus, measures of attentional resource availability may predict the operator's subsequent vigilance performance. In this study, we investigated whether a diagnostic battery of measures of response to a cognitive challenge would predict subsequent sustained attention. Measures that may relate to the mobilization of resources in response to task demands include subjective task engagement and coping, and a novel psychophysiological index, cerebral bloodflow velocity (CBFV). A two-phase design was used. First, participants were exposed to a challenging battery of short tasks that elevated CBFV. Second, participants performed a 36-min vigilance task. Two subgroups of participants performed either a sensory vigilance (N = 187) or a cognitive vigilance (N = 107) task. Measures of task engagement, coping, and CBFV response to the short task battery were compared as predictors of subsequent vigilance. Both subjective and CBFV indices of energization predicted sensory and cognitive vigilance, consistent with resource theory. Structural equation modeling was used to develop a latent factor model of influences on sustained attention. It is concluded that measures of resources, conceptualized as multiple energization processes, are potentially useful for diagnostic monitoring in applied settings. Use of a diagnostic task battery in military and transportation settings is discussed, along with some potential limitations on validity of the diagnostic test.

Drivers of automated vehicles may be vulnerable to fatigue that persists when normal vehicle control is restored. It is important to evaluate automated systems' impact on driver fatigue, to seek design solutions to the issue of maintaining driver engagement, and to address the vulnerabilities of fatigue-prone drivers.

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Responses to a brief six-min screening battery involving high-workload tracking, verbal working memory, and line discrimination tasks were used to predict subsequent performance on a 36-min vigilance task. Two predictors of interest were subjective state, as indexed by the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire (DSSQ), and cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV), measured via transcranial Doppler sonography. The results testify to the importance of assessing task-induced responses for predicting vigilance performance. They also indicate that forecasting vigilance performance is a complex endeavor requiring a set of multidimensional predictors. Specifically, higher post-battery task engagement scores on the DSSQ in this study and higher levels of CBFV in the left hemisphere during performance of the screening battery predicted more correct detections on the subsequent vigilance task. These findings are interpreted in the light of the resource-workload model of vigilance, and their practical significance is discussed.