What do data entry specialists and security guards have in common? Their jobs require vigilance! In everyday language vigilance means, “keeping a careful watch for danger” (check a dictionary near you), but psychologists have adopted the word as a term of art for a certain kind of general work—vigilance is occurring when a person must hold their attention on any task continuously for an extended period of time. (Al-Shargie et al, 2019) Usually, psychologists talk about vigilance more specifically in cases when it’s challenging to hold attention on a task (meaning it’s not the latest blockbuster movie) and when the task requires people to be responsive to rare changes in their environment. In the case of the security guard, most moments of their day are spent standing watch and it's only the rare event they need to physically respond to. But it’s the rare events they’re paid for. Same with the data specialist – not every document has a typo, information that needs to be transferred to a database, or something that needs to be crosschecked, but every data processor has to be ready when such things do appear.
Why is it important to understand vigilance? Psychologists have discovered that when a task is monotonous and the required responses are rare, humans suffer from what’s called a “vigilance decrement”—they get systematically worse at detecting the rare instances when they need to react and continue to get worse as time on task increases. You might be thinking this is something that happens after multiple hours of focus, but unfortunately, studies have shown 15% decrements appearing in the first 15 to 30 minutes of an activity, affecting both the novice and the experienced (Pattyn et al, 2008). A technician could miss something on a radar; a security guard could miss suspicious behavior on a camera feed; a pharmacist could miss a typo in a medication order.
At Extract, we work in document processing—our IDShield product focuses on redaction, in particular. County governments often find themselves with thousands of documents they need to release publicly to remain compliant, but a percentage of those documents include potentially sensitive personal information that needs to be blacked out (“redacted”) first. Employees then need to go through hundreds (or thousands or millions!) of documents one by one scanning for sensitive information that could be present in only a handful of them. Talk about a vigilance challenge!
Happily, there are a number of ways to combat vigilance decrement with proper planning. Here are three:
First and simplest, take breaks--more than you think you need. The vigilance decrement gets worse the longer you are continuously on task. You might use the Pomodoro study method as inspiration—work 25 minutes then take a 5-minute break. Repeat that four times then take a longer 30-minute break.
Second, is there a way to make the “rare” event more attention-grabbing? Our IDShield software uses machine learning calibrated with our customer input to identify those documents which have sensitive information (the “rare” documents then become the “common” ones). When users review the documents, we highlight the likely sensitive information with bright colors overlayed on the document. At the same time, we represent the potential sensitive data in a grid to the side. Instead of hunting for faint text amid a background of other text we pull it to the forefront. Radar operators follow similar principals when they alerted to new objects by a bright flashing indicator.
Finally, simply be aware that the vigilance decrement will be a special source of error for certain tasks that are generally monotonous but include rare events where action is required. If you know, to account for the vigilance decrement as an artefact of human psychology (as opposed to, say, employee training), then in many situations you can set up a QA system as an additional layer of checking. With document processing, re-reviewing even a small selection of randomly selected documents can go a long way in making sure accuracy is within acceptable parameters. Combine that with the other two ideas and you’re already effectively combatting the vigilance decrement.
Citations
Al-Shargie, F., Tariq, U., Mir, H., Alawar, H., Babiloni, F., & Al-Nashash, H. (2019). Vigilance decrement and enhancement techniques: a review. Brain sciences, 9(8), 178.
Pattyn, N., Neyt, X., Henderickx, D., & Soetens, E. (2008). Psychophysiological investigation of vigilance decrement: boredom or cognitive fatigue?. Physiology & behavior, 93(1-2), 369-378.
About the Author: Branden Bryan
Branden is a Project Manager and Customer Support Specialist at Extract with several years of experience as a technical solutions engineer at Epic Systems. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Neurobiology and Philosophy at Cornell University and is currently working on a PhD in Cognitive Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. Branden loves cooking, mixology, and games of all kinds.