Current Projects: Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Laboratory Human Factors Program

Fatigue and its Effects on Vigilance and Target Detection

Principal Investigator: David F. Dinges, Ph.D.

This multi-year research program is discovering how fatigue from sleep loss affects threat-object detection performance, and how fatigue before and during such performance can be objectively detected. The project has three specific aims.

1. Establish the effects of sleep loss on threat-object detection performance using simulated X-ray luggage stimuli.
2. Develop and evaluate a brief Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) for measuring fitness-for-duty to detect vulnerability to fatigue-related error on object detection performance.
3. Assess unobtrusive monitoring of slow eyelid closures (PERCLOS) during threat object detection performance to determine its utility as an on-line measure of fatigue.

Links:

Transportation Security Laboratory
Department of Homeland Security