An Investigation of Vigilance in the Rhesus Monkey

Abstract

The experiments reported here investigated the effects of immediate reinforcement contingent upon detection of a signal in a vigilance task.

Three Rhesus monkeys were trained to report the presence of a 2-sec. signal over a 4-hr. watch. They received a food pellet for each randomly occurring signal detected.

The results indicated that (1) variation in signal rates did not produce differences in detection, (2) no difference in detection occurred over hours of watch, (3) detection and deprivation level were linearly related (Y = 4.1408X + 3.9900), (4) low motivation (8-hr. deprivation) performance was lower (f < 0.01) than high motivation (24-hr. deprivation) for comparable signal frequencies, and (5) the temporal course of a 1.78 mg./kg. dosage of chloropromazine and detection efficiency was found to be logarithmic (Y = 78.33 log X—19.08).

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