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The Effects Of Motivation Level And Task Difficulty On Performance On A Vigilance Task, Donald C. Johnston

All Master's Theses

Although many variables affecting vigilance behavior have been identified, there has not been substantial agreement on the importance of these variables as contributors either to performance decrements often found in laboratory research or to performance levels in industrial inspection tasks. Two variables of presumed importance are level of motivation and task difficulty. The purpose of the present experiment was to assess the main and interactive effects of these variables on performance on a task which approximated more closely an industrial inspection task than have the bulk of traditional vigilance studies.