Phasic Not Tonic Pupillary Responses Vary With Auditory Vigilance Performance

Abstract

Pupillary movements were monitored as 11 university students listened to a series of 1K Hz 50‐msec tone bursts presented at 3.2‐sec intervals for a period of 48 min. Their task was to report target tones (‐3dB), which were presented randomly with a probability of 0.12. Under these conditions, monitoring performance deteriorated as a function of time on the task. This vigilance decrement was attributed to both a decrease in listener sensitivity and a conservative shift in decision criterion, as determined by a signal detection analysis. The amplitude of the phasic task‐evoked pupillary response reflected these changes in performance, decreasing significantly over time on the task. Tonic or baseline pupillary diameter exhibited no such relationship with performance. These results are interpreted in the context of an activation theory of attention that suggests that a common neurophysiological system mediates both intensive and sustained attentional processes.

Pupillary correlates of lapses of sustained attention

“…There was a main effect of block, F(4, 140) = 12.25, MSE = .001, p < .01, partial η 2 = .26, and a significant linear trend, F(1, 35) = 33.06, MSE = .001, p < .01, partial η 2 = .49. Thus, consistent with prior research, TEPRs decreased with time on task (Beatty, 1982b).…”

“…These results demonstrate that different types of lapses of attention are associated with different pretrial baseline pupil levels and further suggest that these lapses are indexing different parts of the LC-NE curve. Task-Evoked Pupillary Response Our final set of analyses focused on TEPRs to see if the TEPRs would decrease with time on task consistent with the decrease seen in pretrial baseline and consistent with prior research (e.g., Beatty, 1982b). The TEPRs were corrected by subtracting out pupil diameter from the last 200 ms of the wait time and locked to when the numbers began counting up.…”

Pupillary and reaction time measures of sustained processing of negative information in depression

“…Pupil dilation has also been observed to increase with the difficulty of mental arithmetic (Ahern and Beatty 1979;Hess and Polt 1964). Of particular interest is the finding that pupils remain dilated during conditions of sustained cognitive load (Beatty 1982a).…”

Pupillary assessment and computational modeling of the Stroop task in depression

“…Pupil dilation persists if the demand is sustained (e.g. Beatty, 1982b). For example, as individuals are asked to remember larger number of digits, for example, pupil dilation increases proportionally (e.g.…”