Sustained Attention

Sustained attention is the ability to hold attentional resources directed at a task over a prolonged period, particularly when target events are infrequent and the environment is relatively monotonous. Mackworth (1948) established the foundational finding in his radar-operator studies: detection accuracy declined markedly over the first 30 minutes of monitoring, a pattern now called the vigilance decrement. Sustained attention differs from attention span in emphasis: it is defined by the rate of performance decline over time rather than by a duration ceiling. It is heavily modulated by arousal, with moderate arousal sustaining performance and low or extreme arousal accelerating the decrement.

Reference: Mackworth, 1948. The NeuroRank implementation holds the canonical form and scales interference via task-irrelevant stimulus density.

1. Maintaining reliable smoke timing awareness across the full duration of a CS2 match rather than only in the opening rounds when vigilance is at its highest.
2. Keeping consistent tracking on an enemy carry throughout a 40-minute MOBA game, including the low-action farming phases that blunt attentional sensitivity.
3. Sustaining flicker-detection accuracy during the quieter early phases of an FPS round, when the probability of a target appearing is low but the cost of a missed detection is high.

NeuroRank's Composure and Reaction modules run enough trials that intra-session performance decay becomes visible in the trial-by-trial record. Players who maintain stable RT and accuracy across the full module demonstrate stronger sustained attention. The Consistency dimension score partially captures this: high trial-to-trial variance often reflects attention lapses rather than genuine mechanical instability.