Lapses in attention are ubiquitous and, unfortunately, the cause of many tragic accidents. One potential solution may be to develop assistance systems which can use objective, physiological signals to monitor attention levels and predict a lapse in attention before it occurs. As it stands, it is unclear which physiological signals are the most reliable markers of inattention, and even less is known about how reliably they will work in a more naturalistic setting. My project aims to address these questions across two experiments: a lab-based experiment and a more ‘real-world’ experiment. In this talk I will present the findings from my lab experiment, in which we combined EEG and pupillometry to detect markers of inattention during two computerised sustained attention tasks. I will then present the methods for my second, more ‘naturalistic’ experiment in which we use the same methods (EEG and pupillometry) to examine whether these markers can still be extracted from noisier data.

Three studies conducted in the context of PhD work (UNIL) aimed at proving evidence to address the question of potential gender differences in trait anxiety and executive control biases on behavioral efficacy. In scope were male and female non-clinical samples of adult young age that performed non-emotional tasks assessing basic attentional functioning (Attention Network Test – Interactions, ANT-I), sustained attention (Test of Variables of Attention, TOVA), and visual recognition abilities (Object in Location Recognition Task, OLRT). Results confirmed the intricate nature of the relationship between gender and health trait anxiety through the lens of their impact on processing efficacy in males and females. The possibility of a gendered theory in trait anxiety biases is discussed.