Team Performance on Monitoring Tasks: An Examination of Decision Errors in Contexts Requiring Sustained Attention

The purpose of this study was to examine individual and team performance in situations requiring sustained attention. Eighty research participants arrayed in 20 four-person teams worked for 2 separate 3-hr sessions on a naval-command-and-control simulation. The results of the study replicated the past literature on the vigilance decrement and extended the literature by documenting a postcritical signal decrement as well. The study also showed that problems in the area of sustained attention generalize from situations involving individual decision makers to contexts where decisions are made by teams.