Electrodermal Habituation Speed and Visual Monitoring Performance

ABSTRACT Previous research has suggested that speed of habituation of the electrodermal orienting response is related to auditory vigilance performance. The present study investigated the relationship between habituation speed, nonspecific response frequency, and detection performance in a complex visual monitoring task. Two levels of task difficulty were employed. In the visual monitoring task, correct detections declined across blocks, and fewer signals were detected in the difficult task condition. Slow habituators detected more signals than fast habituators, but NSR‐frequency was not significantly related to the number of correct detections. The implications of these findings for different models of the relationship between habituation speed and vigilance performance are discussed.