Affective arousal, affect level and vigilance task performance

Pages: 1939-1942
Sujeet Pratap (School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, Punjab)

The construction of affect as considered in dimensional models offers a wide array of possibilities to integrate it with relatively robust constructs. The obvious interaction of affect and cognition is characteristic in nature. Extending the domain of this interaction towards the robust construct of sustained attention, using a sensory and successive vigilance task, the present study examined the influence of affective arousal (high, neutral, & low) on vigilance task performance at a high event rate (30 events/minute)while keeping the overall affective valence as constant. Forty five participants participated in this study. The effectively aroused stimuli (n=100 each for high, neutral & low arousal) were selected from International Affective Picture System (IAPS). A 3(Arousal: low, neutral & high) × 3 (Time period: 10 minutes each) mixed factorial design with repeated measures on the last factor was used. The findings suggest that affective arousal influences hit rate and perceptual sensitivity characteristically. The effect of time period on vigilance task performance confirms the vigilance decrement phenomenon over time. Results further suggest that the reaction time varies differently with specific arousal conditions. The affective arousal conditions influenced the negative affect particularly. Positive affect yielded significant effect on time periods while negative affect interacted with affective arousal conditions over time.