The Breakdown of Vigilance during Prolonged Visual Search.¶
Mackworth, N. H. (1948). The Breakdown of Vigilance during Prolonged Visual Search. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1(1), 6-21.
Cited by¶
8 citations across 8 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Alertness
- In cognitive science, the vigilance literature treats it as a measurable, manipulable capacity that degrades with time-on-task (the vigilance decrement).
This sourceFoundational vigilance-decrement study (the Clock Test), establishing that detection performance degrades measurably with time-on-task.
- In cognitive science, the vigilance literature treats it as a measurable, manipulable capacity that degrades with time-on-task (the vigilance decrement).
- Attentional Capacity
Domain-specific¶
- Operator-Vigilance Dependency
- Norman Mackworth's Clock Test (1948), commissioned to explain why RAF radar operators missed submarine contacts late in their watches
This sourceThe Clock Test itself, together with its wartime radar-watch motivation, which is the demonstration the whole configuration rests on. The Clock Test decrement data -- the only source that can settle the timing and magnitude this sentence asserts.
- Norman Mackworth's Clock Test (1948), commissioned to explain why RAF radar operators missed submarine contacts late in their watches
Mechanisms¶
- Attention Refresh Pulse
- Its limit is that it maintains access, not storage: under high enough interference the pulse simply cannot fire fast enough, and the state is lost no matter how hard you try — the vigilance decrement wins.
This sourceDocuments the vigilance decrement during prolonged monitoring.
- Its limit is that it maintains access, not storage: under high enough interference the pulse simply cannot fire fast enough, and the state is lost no matter how hard you try — the vigilance decrement wins.
- Micro-Recovery Schedule
- An airport security checkpoint knows that a screener staring at an X-ray monitor for threat images gets measurably worse at spotting them within the first half hour — not from boredom they would report, but from the vigilance decrement, the decline in detection performance over time on watch.
This sourceDocuments the vigilance decrement; the decline in detection performance over time on watch.
- An airport security checkpoint knows that a screener staring at an X-ray monitor for threat images gets measurably worse at spotting them within the first half hour — not from boredom they would report, but from the vigilance decrement, the decline in detection performance over time on watch.
- Watch Rotation
- It also directly counters the way sustained monitoring degrades: an observer watching for rare events grows less able to detect them the longer the stint runs, the vigilance decrement first measured in Mackworth's clock-watching experiments.
This sourceReports the vigilance decrement: detection of rare signals deteriorates during prolonged monitoring in Mackworth’s clock-watch experiments.
- It also directly counters the way sustained monitoring degrades: an observer watching for rare events grows less able to detect them the longer the stint runs, the vigilance decrement first measured in Mackworth's clock-watching experiments.
- Watch Rotation Roster
- The empirical anchor is the vigilance decrement
This sourceMackworth's prolonged-watch experiment established a vigilance decrement, with correct signal detections falling markedly during the early part of a monotonous watch.
- The empirical anchor is the vigilance decrement
- Watchstander or Situation Cell
- Its failure mode is vigilance decrement: sustained monitoring attention degrades over time
This sourceReports a vigilance decrement during sustained rare-signal monitoring, with observers working beyond a half-hour missing more signals than fresh or rested observers.
- Its failure mode is vigilance decrement: sustained monitoring attention degrades over time
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 8 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.
Was it audited? Yes. A second, independent pass read the citation against the article text and recorded a verdict.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
See how references were verified.
Registry ID ref:58b7f5d775a8 · see in the full table