Signal probability effects on high-workload vigilance tasks

Signal probability is an important influence on vigilance. Typically, higher signal probability is associated with higher hit rate, lower response criterion, and lower response:signal ratio. However, signal probability effects on demanding, high-workload vigilance tasks have not been investigated. It is believed that attentional resources become depleted during performance of such tasks, leading to perceptual sensitivity decrements. Forty subjects performed high- (.35) and low- (.10) probability versions of a demanding vigilance task. Results differed in two important respects from those previously obtained with less demanding tasks. First, the decrement in perceptual sensitivity over time was greater for the high-probability task. Second, there were no effects of signal probability on response criterion. Subjective workload was higher for the high-probability task. Implications of the data for resource-depletion and expectancy theories of vigilance are discussed.