@article{ref1,
title="A resource-control account of sustained attention: evidence from mind-wandering and vigilance paradigms",
journal="Perspectives on psychological science",
year="2015",
author="Thomson, David R. and Besner, Derek and Smilek, Daniel",
volume="10",
number="1",
pages="82-96",
abstract="Staying attentive is challenging enough when carrying out everyday tasks, such as reading or sitting through a lecture, and failures to do so can be frustrating and inconvenient. However, such lapses may even be life threatening, for example, if a pilot fails to monitor an oil-pressure gauge or if a long-haul truck driver fails to notice a car in his or her blind spot. Here, we explore two explanations of sustained-attention lapses. By one account, task monotony leads to an increasing preoccupation with internal thought (i.e., mind wandering). By another, task demands result in the depletion of information-processing resources that are needed to perform the task. A review of the sustained-attention literature suggests that neither theory, on its own, adequately explains the full range of findings. We propose a novel framework to explain why attention lapses as a function of time-on-task by combining aspects of two different theories of mind wandering: attentional resource (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006) and control failure (McVay & Kane, 2010). We then use our &quot;resource-control&quot; theory to explain performance decrements in sustained-attention tasks. We end by making some explicit predictions regarding mind wandering in general and sustained-attention performance in particular.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1745-6916",
doi="10.1177/1745691614556681",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691614556681"
}