Comparative Effects of Age, Sex, and Drugs Upon Two Tasks of Auditory Vigilance

Sensory and Cognitive Vigilance: Effects of Age on Performance and Subjective Workload

“…The current and projected "greying" of the population (working and retired) suggests the need for examining vigilance capabilities in different age categories. Older adults have been found to perform more poorly on vigilance tasks than younger adults in some studies (Parasuraman, Nestor, & Greenwood, 1989;Thackray & Touchstone, 1981) but not in others (Davies & Griew, 1%3;Giambra & Quilter, 1988;Neal & Pearson, 1966). lkro alternative hypotheses concerning age effects for sensory and cognitive vigilance are possible.…”

“…Although there may be differences in vigilance performance between sensory and cognitive tasks, only two studies have compared the two kinds of task in the same experiment. Neal and Pearson (1966) used two auditory vigilance tasks: a sensory task requiring detection of duration increments in tones and a cognitive task requiring identification of digit sequences, known as the Bakan (1959) task. A vigilance decrement over time was reported for each task.…”

Selection for vigilance assignments: a review and proposed new direction

“…For the most part, studies of age effects in vigilance have been cross-sectional in nature wherein different cohorts are compared across age levels at a given point in time. While a number of these studies have not revealed any age-related differences in vigilance performance (York 1962, Davies and Griew 1963, Neal and Pearson 1966, others have shown that younger observers perform better than their older cohorts (Canestrari 1963, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science 277 Bicknell 1970, Deaton and Parasuraman 1993, particularly when signal/noise discriminations are difficult (Parasuraman et al 1989) and the background event rate or the rate of presentation of stimulus events to be examined for the presence of critical signals is rapid (Thompson et al 1963, Talland 1966, Davies 1968). To some extent, age differences also depend upon physical fitness with the performance of older less fit observers falling below that of their more fit older cohorts and younger observers (Bunce et al 1996).…”

“…Rivaling the studies just described, several investigations have reported just the opposite effects -superior performance of males over females. Neal and Pearson (1966) utilised the identical vigilance task as Bakan and Manley (1963) except that the task duration was extended to 64-min. Contrary to the earlier study, they found that females performed more poorly than males, missing significantly more signals throughout the watch.…”

Possible Age-Related Progression of Attentional Impairment in ADHD and Its Attenuation by Past Diagnosis and Treatment

“…Tune (1966) did not find significant differences in overall detection rates or detection rates over time between older ( M age = 61) and younger adults ( M age = 39), but there were higher false-alarm rates in older participants over time (it has been suggested that the age-related differences may have been related to shifts in response bias). Neal and Pearson (1966) did not find age-related differences in d′. In an auditory task of sustained attention, Gridley, Mack, and Gilmore (1986) found longer response time (RT) in older compared with younger participants, but no significant differences in d′.…”