Automated Warning Reduces Error of Commission in Vigilance: A Study on Indian Adults

The spotlight regarding the concept of vigilance somehow was limited to the national security for decades. With technological advancement the concept of vigilance has attained importance in industrial set up. But vigilance as a cognitive aspect in regular life was somehow neglected throughout these years. An automated warning system is a sensory stimulation meant to reduce errors in highly loaded cognitive tasks. Previous research findings suggest that performance efficiency is uninfluenced by warning (Helton et. al., 2008) or a higher error of omission reported in the presence of warning signals (Helton et. al., 2011).  But how it affects cognitive process like vigilance is rarely been explored. The present study attempts to reveal the effect of warning on vigilance. Participants were 95 adults chosen from metropolitan areas of Kolkata, India. Participant’s Intelligence, processing speed and accuracy along with their psychiatric morbidity was controlled statistically. Finally, the participants were given a visual vigilance task using a software program (Panda & Banerjee, 2011). Whenever the participants made two consecutive errors, an automated warning signal appeared. Results indicate a significant effect of automated warning on the false alarm scores. The means reflect a lower false alarm score when automated warning was given. The effect size indicates 35.3% of the change in false alarm score can be attributed by automated warning. The findings of the present study proposes if we can incorporate warning signals to provide feedback to the participants during performance of a visual vigilance task the performance accuracy can be increased.  The finding of the study can be used in defense services, industrial set up as well as during performing day to day cognitive tasks that demand sustained attention or vigilance.