Matthieu Chidharom¹, Monica Rosenberg¹, Edward Vogel¹; ¹The University of Chicago

Sustained attention is the ability to maintain focus on a specific goal over time, but lapses in attention are frequent. Many theories have attributed these lapses to a transient failure of cognitive control in maintaining the goal in mind. However, these proposals have been challenged because recent findings have shown greater engagement of cognitive control during states more prone to lapses (Esterman et al., 2013). We hypothesized that lapses occur during periods of high competition between goals, requiring stronger cognitive control. A failure of managing control between competing goals during these periods could explain lapses, reconciling contradictory findings. To test this goal-competition hypothesis, we developed a Switch-Continuous Performance Task (CPT) in which subjects alternated task goals between blocks -either switching or holding the same goal- in an effort to manipulate periods of higher and lower competition between goals. Participants (N=30) viewed a bilateral display showing a scene (indoor/outdoor) and a face (male/female) on each trial. After every 20 trials a cue instructed participants to perform either the scene task (e.g., press for frequent indoor scenes, not infrequent outdoor scenes) or the face task (e.g., press for frequent male faces, not infrequent female faces). Results showed more attention lapses during switch periods than repeats, suggesting that lapses occur during periods of high competition between goals. In a second study (N=30), we monetarily rewarded performance on only one goal (scene or face) to create unequal competition between goals. We found that switching to a rewarded goal did not induce more lapses, whereas switching to an unrewarded goal produced more lapses in sustained attention. In a third study (N=20), we recorded EEG activity to isolate the neural mechanisms underlying goal competition. Together, these findings support the goal-competition hypothesis as an explanation for the occurrence of sustained attention lapses.