Attention and mental performance in confinement: evidence from cognitive psychophysiology.

In summary, the results provide several lines of evidence for the assumption that confinement and isolation for a period of 60 days attenuate attentional capacity differentially during auditory classification: the extraction of information from low probability events, but not from high probability events, is decreased by attentional limitations. With the advent of automatic control systems there is an increasing number of operations which require the monitoring of information sources for low probability critical stimuli for extended periods of time. Given the functional similarities of the task employed in this study and the monitoring tasks in practical settings, the results of this study should be considered as a human factor concern for control operations taking place under conditions of confinement and isolation.