Welcome to the Performance Research Laboratory (PeRL)!
Our research focuses on psychological aspects that affect cognitive performance and technology use. Specifically, we are interested in how social, motivational, affective, and trait factors affect performance, stress and workload in vigilance.
What is Vigilance?
Vigilance is commonly defined as the ability to sustain attention for extended periods of time and to respond to infrequently occurring signals. Performance on such tasks has been shown to decline over time, a phenomena known as the “vigilance decrement”, while stress and workload tend to increase.
What are Individual Differences?
Individual differences help explain why every person varies in some aspects of their psychological characteristics. More specifically, we examine factors such as age, biological sex, personality traits, etc.
What are our current research efforts?
At this time, we have four major lines of research:
- The study of individual differences as they relate to performance, workload, and stress associated with performing vigilance tasks.
- The role of the environmental factors (e.g., social context, background noise) in relation to human performance, workload, and stress.
- The impacts of social media and other technologies on human performance and stress.
- Training for vigilance tasks, including air traffic controllers, baggage screening, threat detection, and military applications.