A Comparison of Performance on Visual and Auditory Monitoring Tasks

Abstract

Four forms of a vigilance task were administered over four sessions in counter-balanced order to 16 subjects. Three of the forms required auditory monitoring (one, two, or three tones) and one required visual (three lights) monitoring. Visual performance was superior to auditory performance; the auditory performance was a function of the number of channels monitored. Performance did not change over the four sessions. Among the different scoring methods used, “percent correct” had the most common variance. Decrements in performance appeared within ten minutes in the one- and two-channel auditory tasks. An overall downward trend appeared in the three-channel visual task but was less regular. No systematic change in performance was apparent in the three-channel auditory task. Intratask correlations over subjects were high (r >. 75), while intertask correlations showed only 20% common variance.