Continuous Performance Tasks: Not Just About Sustaining Attention

Purpose

Continuous performance tasks (CPTs) are used to measure individual differences in sustained attention. Many different stimuli have been used as response targets without consideration of their impact on task performance. Here, we compared CPT performance in typically developing adults and children to assess the role of stimulus processing on error rates and reaction times.

Method

Participants completed a CPT that was based on response to infrequent targets, while monitoring and withholding responses to regular nontargets. Performance on 3 stimulus conditions was compared: visual letters (X and O), their auditory analogs, and auditory pure tones.

Results

Adults showed no difference in error propensity across the 3 conditions but had slower reaction times for auditory stimuli. Children had slower overall reaction times. They responded most quickly to the visual target and most slowly to the tone target. They also made more errors in the tone condition than in either the visual or the auditory spoken CPT conditions.

Conclusions

The results suggest error propensity and reaction time variations on CPTs cannot solely be interpreted as evidence of inattention. They also reflect stimulus-specific influences that must be considered when testing hypotheses about modality-specific deficits in sustained attention in populations with different developmental disorders.

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