Individual Differences in Achievement Motivation are related to Vigilance Performance

摘要

Vigilance, or sustained attention, tasks require observers to attend to information over aprolonged period of time. One individual difference that may be associated with sustainedattention performance is achievement motivation, given recent findings in the literature thatindicate a relationship between human motivation and attention. Fifty-nine participants wererandomly assigned to either a cognitive or sensory vigilance task. The present study indicated thatindividuals high in achievement motivation detected more critical signals and made fewer falsealarms in the cognitive vigilance task. Participants high in achievement motivation in thecognitive condition also demonstrated some of the highest distress and worry scores post-task.Implications for sustained attention tasks are discussed.