Sustaining visual attention in the face of distraction: A novel gradual onset continuous performance task

Abstract

Sustained attention is a fundamental aspect of hu- man cognition and has been widely studied in applied and clinical contexts. Despite a growing understanding of how attention varies throughout task performance, moment-to- moment fluctuations are often difficult to assess. In order to better characterize fluctuations in sustained visual attention, in the present study we employed a novel continuous perfor- mance task (CPT), the gradual-onset CPT (gradCPT). In the gradCPT, a central face stimulus gradually transitions between individuals at a constant rate (1,200 ms), and participants are instructed to respond to each male face but not to a rare target female face. In the distractor-present version, the background distractors consist of scene images, and in the distractor-absent condition, of phase-scrambled scene images. The results con- firmed that the gradCPT taxes sustained attention, as vigilance decrements were observed over the task's 12-min duration: Participants made more commission errors and showed in- creasingly variable response latencies (RTs) over time. Participants' attentional states also fluctuated from moment to moment, with periods of higher RT variability being asso- ciated with increased likelihood of errors and greater speed- accuracy trade-offs. In addition, task performance was related to self-reported mindfulness and the propensity for attention lapses in everyday life. The gradCPT is a useful tool for studying both low- and high-frequency fluctuations in sustained visual attention and is sensitive to individual differ- ences in attentional ability.