DAYDREAMING AND AGING--NORMATIVE AND EXPERIMENTAL

这项工作的目的是确定与任务无关的参数 无论是自发的(白日梦)还是其他方面的思想干扰，以及 相关的精神活动，如洞察力、直觉和走神。一个 另一个目的是调查持续的 注意力和年龄。这些目的是通过使用 对照实验室研究和回溯性问卷。结果 源自这些目的并在本财政年度内取得的是：(A) 1962年测试的三个男性和女性样本--和1980年至1984年，他们的范围在 年龄从20岁到92岁，谁进行了麦克沃斯时钟测试，是 观察到在统计上没有显著的年龄差异 男性的自发皮肤电位反应和显著的年龄效应 对于皮肤电位响应潜伏期，显示具有 中年时最低；因为采取这两种措施都表明 生理唤醒这一结果微弱地表明，中年男性 在执行持续的注意力任务时最容易被唤醒。(B)在 18年对麦克沃斯时钟测试的纵向研究 只有目标响应时间的变化受以下因素的影响 男性的初始年龄--中枪可能性、假警报、皮肤潜力 潜伏期和自发皮肤电位反应的数量 不受影响--年轻男性在接近中年时变得更快 而中年男性随着年龄的增长变得更慢；这一结果提供了 对横断面研究产生的概念的额外支持 这个年龄对整体的持续注意力几乎没有影响。(C)总计 613名男性和女性的样本中警觉性下降的表现为 由观察目标的可能性表示的可以被准确地描述 由两个指数项组成的数学函数，负数 指数和由1的倒数组成的上界项 加上负指数，乘以常量；简单的负数 指数被解释为一个费力的控制过程，而另一个 组件被解释为一个自动的、无意识的过程。

The purpose of this work is to determine the parameters of task-unrelated thought-intrusions both spontaneous (daydreams) and otherwise, as well as related mental activity such as insight, intuition, and mindwandering. An additional purpose is to investigate the relation between sustained attention and age. The purposes are accomplished through the use of controlled laboratory studies and retrospective questionnaires. Outcomes derived from these purposes and obtained over the fiscal year were: (a) Three samples of men and women tested in 1962-64 and 1980-84, who ranged in age from 20-92 years and who performed the Mackworth Clock Test, were observed to show no statistically significant age differences in number of spontaneous skin potential responses and a significant age effect for males for skin potential response latency revealing a U-shaped function with a minimum at middle-age; since both measures are taken as indicates of physiological arousal this outcome weakly suggests that middle-aged males are most highly aroused when performing a sustained attention task. (b) In an 18 year longitudinal study of the Mackworth Clock Test it was determined that only the change in target response time was significantly affected by the initial age of the men--hit likelihood, false alarms, skin potential latency, and number of spontaneous skin potential responses were unaffected--with young men becoming faster as they approached middle age and middle-aged men becoming slower as they aged; this outcome provides additional support for the notion resulting from cross-sectional studies that age has little effect on overall sustained attention. (c) In a Total Sample of 613 men and women the vigilance decrement in performance as indicated by likelihood of observing a target could be described precisely by a mathematical function comprised of two exponential terms, a negative exponential and an upper bounded term composed of the reciprocal of one plus a negative exponential, multiplied by constant; the simple negative exponential was interpreted as an effortful control process and the other component was interpreted as an automatic, nonconscious process.