The purpose of this study was to compare vigilance performance and level of arousal of two groups of Ss differing in the signal presentation rate they received. It was hypothesized that a group receiving relatively infrequent signals would be over-aroused and would perform at a lower level primarily because they would be responding to irrelevant stimuli. Basal skin resistance and muscle potentials indicated that, as hypothesized, the Infrequent Ss were more highly aroused than the Frequent Ss. Performance data indicated that the Infrequent group made a smaller percentage of correct detections and a much greater number of false alarms than the Frequent group.
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