Restoring vigilance in multi-task scenarios: a comparison of meditation, exposure to nature, music, and action video games

This study aimed to investigate the cognitive mechanisms behind vigilance changes in multi-task scenarios. Moreover, we compared the effects of four types of rest activities, i.e. meditation, virtual exposure to nature, listening to music, playing an action video game (AVG), on mitigating possible performance decline and regulating task-induced emotional changes in complex multiple-source vigilance tasks. Results of a two-session experiment on fifty-six participants using the Multi-Attribute Task Battery-II (MATB-II) suggest that the participants’ arousal levels increased with time-on-task in both sessions, and performance decrement was observed only in the second session. Mindlessness measures were associated with performance fluctuations. All types of rest led to significant performance improvement in the second session, with meditation having the largest effect and AVG having the smallest. Rest activities restore performance by improving executive control (meditation), reducing emotional activity (meditation and nature exposure), or boosting arousal (music). In complex systems, operators often perform multiple tasks over prolonged periods of time, and rest periods are provided between these periods. This study compared four types of rest activities in terms of their effects on mitigating possible performance decline and regulating task-induced emotional changes in this context.