The present paper discusses vigilance phenomena in terms of the automatic/control processing theory (Schneider and Shiffrin, 1977) of attention and human information processing. Fisk and Schneider (1981) interpreted vigilance decrements within the automatic/control process framework and discussed system design implications as well as training methods for vigilance environments. Recent results concerning the effects of various stressors on automatic and control processes are presented. Taken as a whole, these results from vigilance, alcohol intoxication, heat stress, and mental workload experiments highlight why, when addressing sustained attention issues, it is critical to understand the mode of information processing (i.e., automatic/control) available to perform the task.
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