Periodic performance feedback and cognitive ability interactively mitigate the vigilance decrement.

Authors

Matthew K Robison, Reyes Flores, Benjamin Rudd

Published in

Attention, perception & psychophysics. Volume 88. Issue 7. Aug 20, 2026. Epub Aug 20, 2026.

Abstract

We investigated the effects of periodic performance feedback across three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to either a feedback condition, in which there was periodic performance feedback (n = 302), or to a control condition, which received no feedback (n = 293). Whereas the control condition demonstrated a large vigilance decrement, even over a brief task duration, participants in the feedback condition performed both better overall and demonstrated a significantly shallower decrement. Experiment 2 (n = 103) was a preregistered replication with an extended task duration, and we directly replicated the findings. Experiment 3 was another preregistered experiment (n = 283), in which we examined three conditions with the extended duration: feedback for the entire task, feedback for only the first half of the task, and no feedback for the entire duration. The conditions did not differ in performance. However, in a post hoc cross-experimental analysis, we discovered significant moderation of the feedback effect via fluid intelligence. The findings have implications for how we view vigilance as a cognitive construct, why it typically wanes with time, and how it may be stabilized. All data and materials are publicly available on the Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/fzd2h/ ).

PMID:
42625096
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 21 Aug 2026.

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