title: Practice does not make perfect in a modified sustained attention to response task.
abstract: In the current investigation, we examined the changes in performance, task-related thoughts (TRT), and task-unrelated thoughts (TUT) over four sessions of a modified sustained attention to response task (SART). Eighteen participants completed a clockwise manual selection SART (Head and Helton in Conscious Cogn 22:913-919, 2013) and a conscious thought questionnaire once a week for four weeks. Response times and errors of commission oscillated over sessions in line with a motor strategy interpretation of the SART. As participants became faster in the task, they made more commission errors. The conscious thought questionnaire failed to show a relationship between errors of commission and TRT and TUT on the SART at either a between-subject or within-subject level of analysis. Commission errors in the SART may be better measures of executive motor control and response strategy than perceptual decoupling.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Head
authors.forename: William S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Helton
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult