The rampage appears to be not so much a case of a young man slipping through the cracks, as a tragedy in which measured vigilance ended up not being enough.
We measured vigilance using a go/no-go continuous performance task (Covey, Shucard, Violanti, Lee, & Shucard, 2013).
Software designed to measure vigilance was used to assess attentional deficits in the three groups included in the study.
Task parameters in these previous animal cognitive studies differed from those of a CPT however, and hence these studies did not measure vigilance consistent with human testing, as operationally defined by Mackworth [4] and Rosvold, [9].
Tasks that included a time delay or intervening task between prospective memory instructions and commencement of an ongoing task (I-T delay) were classified as measuring prospective memory proper whereas tasks that included no I-T delay were classified as measuring vigilance.
Consistent with this analysis, Einstein, McDaniel, Richardson, Guynn, and Cunfer [55] themselves believed that they measured vigilance or prospective memory proper rather than habitual prospective memory even though they used multiple cues and much longer cue-to-cue delays of 7 minutes in one of their prior studies.
Within the attention and executive function domains, larger deficits are found on tasks measuring vigilance, working memory (especially spatial working memory), and response inhibition abilities, whereas smaller but significant deficits are also seen on tasks measuring alertness, cognitive flexibility, and planning abilities.
Different studies also operate with different measures of vigilance (percentage of time vigilant, frequency/duration of vigilance bouts) that appear to give different results (e.g., Trouilloud et al. 2004; Beauchamp 2008).
Both ADHD and mania are characterized by an unstable wakefulness regulation assessed by EEG measures of vigilance, ratings of sleepiness and deficits in sustained attention tasks.
