The strategic allocation theory of vigilance

Samuel Murray, Santiago Amaya
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Abstract

Despite its importance in different occupational and everyday contexts, vigilance, typically defined as the capacity to sustain attention over time, is remarkably limited. What explains these limits? Two theories have been proposed. The Overload Theory states that being vigilant consumes limited information‐processing resources; when depleted, task performance degrades. The Underload Theory states that motivation to perform vigilance tasks declines over time, thereby prompting attentional shifts and hindering performance. We highlight some conceptual and empirical problems for both theories and propose an alternative: the Strategic Allocation Theory. For the Strategic Allocation Theory, performance on vigilance tasks optimizes as a function of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, including metacognitive factors such as the expected value of effort and the expected value of planning. Limited capacities must be deployed across task sets to maximize expected reward. The observed limits of vigilance reflect changes in the perceived value of, among other things, sustaining attention to a task rather than attending to something else. Drawing from recent computational theories of cognitive control and meta‐reasoning, we argue that the Strategic Allocation Theory explains more phenomena related to vigilance behavior than other theories, including self‐report data. Finally, we outline some of the testable predictions the theory makes across several experimental paradigms.This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science Psychology > Attention
警觉的战略分配理论
尽管警觉性在不同的职业和日常环境中都非常重要,但它通常被定义为在一段时间内保持注意力的能力,但警觉性却非常有限。是什么造成了这种局限性?有人提出了两种理论。超负荷理论认为,保持警惕会消耗有限的信息处理资源;一旦资源耗尽,任务表现就会下降。负荷不足理论认为,执行警觉任务的动机会随着时间的推移而下降,从而促使注意力转移并阻碍任务的完成。我们强调了这两种理论在概念和实证方面存在的一些问题,并提出了一种替代理论:战略分配理论。在战略分配理论中,警觉性任务的表现是内在和外在动机的函数,包括元认知因素,如努力的预期价值和计划的预期价值。必须将有限的能力部署到不同的任务集,以实现预期回报的最大化。所观察到的警觉极限反映了人们对持续关注某项任务而不是关注其他事情的感知价值的变化。借鉴最近的认知控制和元推理计算理论,我们认为战略分配理论比其他理论(包括自我报告数据)更能解释与警觉行为相关的现象。最后,我们概述了该理论在多个实验范式中做出的一些可检验的预测:哲学 > 认知科学基础 心理学 > 注意力
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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