The dishabituation method to prevent vigilance decrements

我们提出了一种新的机制来解释警觉性下降，假设它的发生是因为认知控制系统未能在长时间内保持警觉性任务目标的活跃（目标习惯化）。此外，我们假设暂时停用这一目标（通过任务切换）将阻止警惕性目标的激活水平从习惯化。我们要求观察者在保持四位数记忆的同时执行一项视觉警戒任务。当观察者在警觉性任务中被要求零星地回忆数字时，警觉性下降被阻止了。我们的研究结果直接挑战了普遍存在的观点，即警惕性下降是由于注意力资源的消耗造成的，并提供了一种可处理的机制来避免日常生活中这种潜在的现象。

We propose a new mechanism to account for the vigilance decrement, hypothesizing that it occurs because the cognitive control system fails to maintain active the goal of the vigilance task over prolonged periods of time (goal habituation). Further, we hypothesized that momentarily deactivating this goal (via a switch in tasks) would prevent the activation level of the vigilance goal from ever habituating. We asked observers to perform a visual vigilance task while maintaining four digits in memory. When observers were asked to sporadically recollect the digits during the vigilance task, the vigilance decrement was prevented. Our results present a direct challenge to the pervasive view that vigilance decrements are due to a depletion of attentional resources and provide a tractable mechanism to avert this insidious phenomenon in everyday life.