Daily arousal variation has little effect on sustained attention performance

Sustaining attention is an important cognitive process for everyday functioning and arousal is thought to underpin its performance. Primate studies depict an inverted-u relation between sustained attention and arousal, in which sustained attention performance is most affected at the extreme levels of arousal and peak performance aligns with moderate arousal. Human research findings are, however, inconsistent. This study aimed to investigate the effects of arousal on sustained attention performance in humans using two approaches—a small-N study with an inbuilt replication to test within-participant variation, and a larger sample assessing between-participant variation. The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) was used to measure sustained attention performance and the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) was used to measure arousal. In the small-N study five participants completed the SART and KSS once an hour between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., repeated two weeks later. Significant, curvilinear variation in KSS across time-of-day was found. A linear association between SART response time variability (sigma) and KSS was noted, however no other consistent associations between the SART and KSS were found. In the large-N study, 161 participants completed the SART and KSS once, at a time of day of their choosing. There were no significant relations between SART measures and the KSS, indicating that subjective sleepiness was not related to sustained attention performance. Overall, the hypothesized inverted-u relation between arousal and sustained attention performance was not found. The results suggested that diurnal arousal variation does not modify sustained attention performance in adults.