Citation

Claypoole VL, Szalma JL. Ergonomics 2017; 60(11): 1485-1499.

Affiliation

a University of Central Florida , Department of Psychology.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/00140139.2017.1308563

PMID

28303759

Abstract

Vigilance is the ability of an observer to maintain attention for extended periods of time; however, performance tends to decline with time on watch, a pattern referred to as the vigilance decrement. Previous research has focused on factors that attenuate the decrement; however, one factor rarely studied is the effect of social facilitation. The purpose for the present investigation was to determine how different types of social presence affected the performance, workload, and stress of vigilance. It was hypothesized that the presence of a supervisory figure would increase overall performance, but may occur at the cost of increased workload and stress.

RESULTS indicated that the percent of false alarm and response times decreased in the presence of a supervisory figure. Using social facilitation in vigilance tasks may thus have positive, as well as, negative effects depending on the dependent measure of interest, and the role of the observer. Practitioner Summary Social facilitation has rarely been examined in the context of vigilance, even though it may improve performance. Vigilance task performance was examined under social presence. The results of the present study indicated that false alarms and response times decreased in the social presence of a supervisory figure, thus improving performance.

Language: en

Keywords

Human Performance; Social Facilitation; Supervisor; Vigilance