During a monotonous activity, certain behaviours occur that are not necessary to the performance of the task. These are subsidiary or collateral activities. The authors' purpose was to find out if the number of these behaviours tends to increase during a monotonous and prolonged activity. A study was carried out with 17 subjects performing a 2-h car drive on the Vigilance Analysis Driving Simulator. An analysis of the drivers' behaviour and of their state of vigilance allowed them to confirm the existence of a relation between the occurrence of these behaviours and the variations of the level of arousal. In addition, they determined for all produced behaviours, those that preceded, those that coincided with, and those that followed low vigilance phenomena. These results were interpreted in terms of behavioural signs, precursory of low vigilance, indicative of low vigilance, or reactivating the driver. (Author/publisher).
Abstract