Rapid reorientation to task demands following lapses of sustained attention

AbstractLapses of sustained attention cause slips-of-action, but overt errors can be avoided if attention can be reoriented to task demands sufficiently quickly. Despite the ubiquity of such ‘near misses’, little research has been dedicated to examining the speed of attentional recovery after a lapse of sustained attention. The present study investigated how frequently, and how quickly, participants are able to reorient attention after a lapse in a modification of the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) that required participants to make two simultaneous responses on target trials instead of withholding responses. On most trials in which a lapse occurred, participants were able to reorient attention well within the timeframe of a single trial, with corrective responses made within ~200 ms of execution of the erroneous response, faster than responses to targets in a simple target detection task. These findings show, for the first time, that participants are able to rapidly and flexibly reorient attention to task demands after a lapse of sustained attention.