Vigilance Decrement: A Signal-Detection Radar Watch

Sustained attention is not a flat resource — psychologists have known since Mackworth's WWII-era radar studies that an observer's ability to catch rare, important signals fades measurably within the first 20-30 minutes of watching a quiet display. This simulator drives a 3D radar console with a real signal-detection-theory model: every blip is classified as a hit, miss, false alarm or correct rejection from an internal-response draw compared against a criterion, and both the underlying sensitivity (d′) and criterion (c) evolve over simulated time exactly as vigilance research describes. Adjust event rate, target salience and time acceleration and watch the hit rate erode in real time — a direct, interactive demonstration of why air-traffic control, quality inspection and security monitoring all fight the same fundamental cognitive limit.