Self-Report Arousal and Divided Attention: A Study of Performance Operating Characteristics

Effects of arousal on single- and dual-task performance may be mediated by individual differences in both the availability and the allocation of attentional resources. The relation between arousal and resource usage was tested by con- structing performance operating characteristics (POCs) for concurrent per- formance of two category-search tasks for subjects high and low in self-report arousal. Results show an effect of arousal on the POC that is consistent with the hypothesis that high arousal increases the proportion of resources allo- cated to higher priority-task components. This mechanism explains effects of arousal on attentional selectivity. A more fine-grained analysis, taking into account interindividual variation in use of a self-terminating search strategy, suggested that higher arousal subjects also have more available resources. It is concluded that the extra resources of higher arousal subjects may only be de- ployed if there is a task component that is perceived to be of high priority.