Schedule of Events | Symposia

The Effects of Short-Form Mindfulness Training on the Vigilance Decrement

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Jason S. Tsukahara¹ (jason.tsukahara@miami.edu), Brooke Schwartzman¹, Anthony P. Zanesco², Ekaterina Denkova¹, Scott Rogers¹, Amishi P. Jha¹; ¹University of Miami, ²University of Kentucky

The vigilance decrement, declining performance with greater time-on-task, highlights the challenges of sustaining attention over prolonged task engagement. For high-demand occupations, such as the military, such performance deterioration may jeopardize safety and mission success. Mindfulness training (MT) has shown promise in protecting and strengthening overall attentional performance, but its potential to mitigate the vigilance decrement has been underexplored. Here, US Army soldiers undergoing intensive military training were recruited to serve as no-training controls (NTC, n=71), or receive a 4-week, 8-hour MT program (MT, n=161) referred to as mindfulness-based attention training (MBAT). Attentional performance on a 20-minute Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) was examined before (T1) vs. after (T2) the 4-week MT interval. Overall task performance as well as time-on-task effects indexing the vigilance decrement were examined. Relative to NTC, MT showed less decline in overall SART performance (indexed via A' and response time variability) from T1 to T2. Examination of the vigilance decrement via growth curve modelling confirmed that A' decreased and response time variability increased with greater time on task at both T1 and T2. While there were no group by time (i.e., T1 vs. T2) differences, for those in the MT group, greater mindfulness practice over the 4-week interval, was associated with a diminished vigilance decrement at T2. These results suggest that mindfulness training is protective for overall task performance and that greater mindfulness practice further protects against the vigilance decrement, which may mitigate attentional failures in high-demand occupations such as the military.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Other