Modeling short-term fatigue decrements in the successive/simultaneous discrimination task

Previous research using goal-directed computational models has demonstrated that microlapses, or brief disruptions in effortful cognitive processing, are related to decreases in vigilance as a function of time-on-task in the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) (Veksler and Gunzelmann, 2018). We extended these computational accounts of fatigue to model performance in two vigilance tasks that differ with respect to demands on working memory, i.e., successive vs. simultaneous discrimination (Davies and Parasuraman, 1982). While task performance was not affected by working memory demands, simulations show that fatigue moderators successfully capture decreases in vigilance over time. Additionally, participants showed greater individual differences in model parameters related to task performance, but not in the effects of fatigue across time. These results highlight the importance of fatigue moderators in computational accounts of vigilance tasks.