Abstract
Computer users are often the last line of defense in computer security. However, with repeated exposures to system messages and computer security warnings, neural and behavioral responses show evidence of habituation. Habituation has been demonstrated at a neural level as repetition suppression where responses are attenuated with subsequent repetitions. In the brain, repetition suppression to visual stimuli has been demonstrated in multiple cortical areas, including the occipital lobe and medial temporal lobe. Prior research into the repetition suppression effect has generally focused on a single repetition and has not examined the pattern of signal suppression with repeated exposures. We used complex, everyday stimuli, in the form of images of computer programs or security warning messages, to examine the repetition suppression effect across repeated exposures. The use of computer warnings as stimuli also allowed us to examine the activation of learned fearful stimuli. We observed widespread linear decreases in activation with repeated exposures, suggesting that repetition suppression continues after the first repetition. Further, we found greater activation for warning messages compared to neutral images in the anterior insula, pre-supplemental motor area, and inferior frontal gyrus, suggesting differential processing of security warning messages. However, the repetition suppression effect was similar in these regions for both warning messages and neutral images. Additionally, we observed an increase of activation in the default mode network with repeated exposures, suggestive of increased mind wandering with continuing habituation.
Highlights
One major obstacle to computer security is habituation on the part of computer users to repeated computer security messages
Evidence for repetition suppression has been observed for both auditory (Costa-Faidella et al, 2011; Todorovic et al, 2011) and visual processing (Summerfield et al, 2008, 2011; Larsson and Smith, 2012) using recording methods including single-unit recording electrophysiology (Malmierca et al, 2009), functional magnetic resonance imaging (Larsson and Smith, 2012; Grotheer and Gyula, 2015), electroencephalography (Costa-Faidella et al, 2011; Summerfield et al, 2011), and magnetoencephalography (Todorovic et al, 2011; Todorovic and de Lange, 2012)
We found evidence of repetition suppression for both stimulus types throughout the visual processing stream
Summary
One major obstacle to computer security is habituation on the part of computer users to repeated computer security messages. Sometimes termed “warning fatigue,” this habituation to security warnings can result in lower rates of security behavior (Akhawe and Felt, 2013). At a biological level, repeated exposure to a stimulus results in repetition suppression, or a decreased neuronal. Differential Repetition Suppression Effects response to that stimulus. The effect of habituation has been studied in different ways in different fields. In marketing, a great deal of research has studied “repetition effects” (Schmidt and Eisend, 2015), or the “differential effects of each successive advertising exposure, i.e., the differential effects of a given exposure within a sequence of exposures” The most accepted theory explaining repetition effects is Berlyne’s (1970) two-factor theory that explains a “wear-in” process in which familiarity and ad effectiveness increases with repetitions, and a later “wear-out” process, in which the effectiveness of an advertisement decreases with each succeeding exposure
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