Training for vigilance on the move: a video game-based paradigm for sustained attention

Abstract

The capacity for superior vigilance can be trained by using knowledge of results (KR). Our present experiments demonstrate the efficacy of such training using a first-person perspective movement videogame-based platform in samples of students and Soldiers. Effectiveness was assessed by manipulating KR during a training phase and withdrawing it in a subsequent transfer phase. Relative to a no KR control condition, KR systematically improved performance for both Soldiers and students. These results build upon our previous findings that demonstrated that a video game-based platform can be used to create a movement-centred sustained attention task with important elements of traditional vigilance. The results indicate that KR effects in sustained attention extend to a first person perspective movement based paradigm, and that these effects occur in professional military as well as a more general population. Such sustained attention training can save lives and the present findings demonstrate one particular avenue to achieve this goal.

Practitioner Summary: Sustained attention can be trained by means of knowledge of results using a videogame-based platform with samples of students and Soldiers. Four experiments demonstrate that a dynamic, first-person perspective video game environment can serve to support effective sustained attention training in professional military as well as a more general population.

Keywords:

• Sustained attention
• vigilance
• knowledge of results
• transfer of training
• video game-based vigilance
• IED detection

Acknowledgement

The views expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect official Army policy. The authors wish to thank Dr Steven Burnett and Dr Jennifer Murphy for providing administrative and technical direction as the Technical POC on the contract.