Skip to the content of the web site.


Locations of visitors to this page

OOPS! Now, why did I do that?

Our Publications

Here you will find copies of our publications on inattention. While we will endeavour to include all our publications here, including those that are still in press, we can't guarantee the list will be an exhaustive representation of our work at any given time. So if you don't see what you're looking for you may want to search for us on Google Scholar or contact us.

Challenge and error: Critical events and attention-related errors

Cognition 121 (2011) 437-446

Abstract

Attention lapses resulting from reactivity to task challenges and their consequences constitute a pervasive factor affecting everyday performance errors and accidents. A bidirectional model of attention lapses (error <--> attention-lapse: Cheyne, Solman, Carriere, & Smilek, 2009) argues that errors beget errors by generating attention lapses; resource-depleting cognitions interfering with attention to subsequent task challenges. Attention lapses lead to errors, and errors themselves are a potent consequence often leading to further attention lapses potentially initiating a spiral into more serious errors. We investigated this challenge-induced error <--> attention-lapse model using the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), a GO–NOGO task requiring continuous attention and response to a number series and withholding of responses to a rare NOGO digit. We found response speed and increased commission errors following task challenges to be a function of temporal distance from, and prior performance on, previous NOGO trials. We conclude by comparing and contrasting the present theory and findings to those based on choice paradigms and argue that the present findings have implications for the generality of conflict monitoring and control models

Read

Attention failures versus misplaced diligence: Separating attention lapses from speed–accuracy trade-offs

Consciousness and Cognition (2011) online September 17, 2011

Abstract

In two studies of a GO–NOGO task assessing sustained attention, we examined the effects of (1) altering speed–accuracy trade-offs through instructions (emphasizing both speed and accuracy or accuracy only) and (2) auditory alerts distributed throughout the task. Instructions emphasizing accuracy reduced errors and changed the distribution of GO trial RTs. Additionally, correlations between errors and increasing RTs produced a U-function; excessively fast and slow RTs accounted for much of the variance of errors. Contrary to previous reports, alerts increased errors and RT variability. The results suggest that (1) standard instructions for sustained attention tasks, emphasizing speed and accuracy equally, produce errors arising from attempts to conform to the misleading requirement for speed, which become conflated with attention-lapse produced errors and (2) auditory alerts have complex, and sometimes deleterious, effects on attention. We argue that instructions emphasizing accuracy provide a more precise assessment of attention lapses in sustained attention tasks

Read

Out of Mind, Out of Sight: Eye Blinking as Indicator and Embodiment of Mind Wandering

Psychological Science 21 (2010) 786-789

Excerpt

Mind wandering, in which cognitive processing of the external environment decreases in favor of internal processing (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006), has been consistently associated with errors on tasks requiring sustained attention and continuous stimulus monitoring (e.g., Cheyne, Carriere, & Smilek, 2006; Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, & Yiend, 1997; Smallwood et al., 2004). Consistent with this finding, recent neuroimaging studies suggest that mind wandering engages the default neural network (Christoff, Gordon, Smallwood, Smith, & Schooler, 2009; Mason et al., 2007; Smallwood, Beach, Schooler, & Handy, 2008; Weissman, Roberts, Visscher, & Woldorff, 2006) and is associated with decreased neural analysis of incoming information (Christoff et al., 2009; Smallwood, Beach et al., 2008; Weissman et al., 2006). Here we propose that mind wandering also involves overt embodied components whereby external input is blocked at the sensory endings. We demonstrate that during an extended period of reading, episodes of mind wandering, compared with on-task periods, contain more eye closures (blinks) and fewer fixations on the text?even as subjects continue to scan the text.

Read

Failures of sustained attention in life, lab, and brain: Ecological validity of the SART

Neuropsychologia 48 (2010) 2564-2570

Abstract

The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) is a widely used tool in cognitive neuroscience increasingly employed to identify brain regions associated with failures of sustained attention. An important claim of the SART is that it is significantly related to real-world problems of sustained attention such as those experienced by TBI and ADHD patients. This claim is largely based on its association with the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ), but recently concerns have been expressed about the reliability of the SART–CFQ association. Based on a review of the literature, meta-analysis of prior research, and analysis of original data, we conclude that, across studies sampling diverse populations and contexts, the SART is reliably associated with the CFQ. The CFQ–SART relation also holds for patients with TBI. We note, however, conceptual limitations of using the CFQ, which was designed as a measure of general cognitive failures, to validate the SART, which was specifically designed to assess sustained attention. To remedy this limitation, we report on associations between the SART and a specific Attention-Related Cognitive Errors Scale (ARCES) and a Mindful Awareness of Attention Scale-Lapses Only (MAAS-LO).

Read

Absent minds and absent agents: Attention-lapse induced alienation of agency

Consciousness and Cognition 18 (2009) 481–493

Abstract

We report a novel task designed to elicit transient attention-lapse induced alienation (ALIA) of agency experiences in normal participants. When attention-related action slips occur during the task, participants reported substantially decreased self control as well as a high degree of perceived agency attributed to the errant hand. In addition, participants reported being surprised by, and annoyed with, the actions of the errant hand. We argue that ALIA experiences occur because of constraints imposed by the close and precise temporal relations between intention formation and a contrary action employed in this paradigm. We note similarities between ALIA experiences and anarchic hand sign (AHS) and argue that, despite important differences, both ALIA experiences and AHS phenomenology reflect failures of executive control to intervene and cancel contrary affordance-driven habitual motor plans.

Read

Anatomy of an error: A bidirectional state model of task engagement/disengagement and attention-related errors

Cognition 111 (2009) 98–113

Abstract

We present arguments and evidence for a three-state attentional model of task engagement/disengagement. The model postulates three states of mind-wandering: occurrent task inattention, generic task inattention, and response disengagement. We hypothesize that all three states are both causes and consequences of task performance outcomes and apply across a variety of experimental and real-world tasks. We apply this model to the analysis of a widely used GO/NOGO task, the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). We identify three performance characteristics of the SART that map onto the three states of the model: RT variability, anticipations, and omissions. Predictions based on the model are tested, and largely corroborated, via regression and lag-sequential analyses of both successful and unsuccessful withholding on NOGO trials as well as self-reported mind-wandering and everyday cognitive errors. The results revealed theoretically consistent temporal associations among the state indicators and between these and SART errors as well as with self-report measures. Lag analysis was consistent with the hypotheses that temporal transitions among states are often extremely abrupt and that the association between mind-wandering and performance is bidirectional. The bidirectional effects suggest that errors constitute important occasions for reactive mind-wandering. The model also enables concrete phenomenological, behavioral, and physiological predictions for future research.

Read

Everyday attention lapses and memory failures: The affective consequences of mindlessness

Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 835–847

Abstract

We examined the affective consequences of everyday attention lapses and memory failures. Significant associations were found between self-report measures of attention lapses (MAAS-LO), attention-related cognitive errors (ARCES), and memory failures (MFS), on the one hand, and boredom (BPS) and depression (BDI-II), on the other. Regression analyses confirmed previous findings that the ARCES partially mediates the relation between the MAAS-LO and MFS. Further regression analyses also indicated that the association between the ARCES and BPS was entirely accounted for by the MAAS-LO and MFS, as was that between the ARCES and BDI-II. Structural modeling revealed the associations to be optimally explained by the MAAS-LO and MFS influencing the BPS and BDI-II, contrary to current conceptions of attention and memory problems as consequences of affective dysfunction. A lack of conscious awareness of one’s actions, signaled by the propensity to experience brief lapses of attention and related memory failures, is thus seen as having significant consequences in terms of long-term affective well-being.

Read

Absent-mindedness: Lapses of conscious awareness and everyday cognitive failures

Consciousness and Cognition 15 (2006) 578–592

Abstract

A brief self-report scale was developed to assess everyday performance failures arising directly or primarily from brief failures of sustained attention (attention-related cognitive errors—ARCES). The ARCES was found to be associated with a more direct measure of propensity to attention lapses (Mindful Attention Awareness Scale—MAAS) and to errors on an existing behavioral measure of sustained attention (Sustained Attention to Response Task—SART). Although the ARCES and MAAS were highly correlated, structural modelling revealed the ARCES was more directly related to SART errors and the MAAS to SART RTs, which have been hypothesized to directly reflect the lapses of attention that lead to SART errors. Thus, the MAAS and SART RTs appear to directly reflect attention lapses, whereas the ARCES and SART errors reflect the mistakes these lapses are thought to cause. Boredom proneness was also assessed by the BPS, as a separate consequence of a propensity to attention lapses. Although the ARCES was significantly associated with the BPS, this association was entirely accounted for by the MAAS, suggesting that performance errors and boredom are separate consequences of lapses in attention. A tendency to even extraordinarily brief attention lapses on the order of milliseconds may have far-reaching consequences not only for safe and efficient task performance but also for sustaining the motivation to persist in and enjoy these tasks.

Read


Other Notable Publications


Coren, S. (1997). Sleep Thieves. New York: Free Press Paper Backs.

Mack, A. & Rock, I. (1998). Inattentional Blindness. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Available online to institutions via MIT CogNet here. Sample chapters available here.

Manly, T., Lewis, G. H., Robertson, I. H., Watson, P.C., & Datta, A. K. (2002), Coffee in the cornflakes: time of the day as a modulator of executive response control. Neuropsychologia, 35, 6, 747-758.

Manly, T., Robertson, I. H., Galloway M., & Hawkins, K. (1999). The absent: Further investigations of sustained attention to response. Neuropsychologia, 37, 661-670.

Reason, J. T. (1977). Skill and error in everyday life. In M. Howe (Ed.), Adult Learning. London: Wiley.

Reason, J. T. (1979). Actions not as planned: The price of automization. In G. Underwood & R. Stevens (Eds), Aspects of consciousness (pp. 67-89). London: Academic Press

Reason, J. T., & Lucas, D. (1984). Absent-mindedness in shops: Its incidence, correlates, and consequences. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 23, 121-131

Reason, J. T., & Mycielska, K. (1982). Absent-minded? The psychology of mental lapses and everyday errors. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Robertson, T. H., Manly, T., Andrade, J. Baddeley, B.T., & Yiend, J. (1997). “Oops”: Performance correlates of everyday attentional failures in traumatic brain injured and normal subjects. Neuropsychologica, 35, 6, 747-758.