Natural scene stimuli and lapses of sustained attention

► The majority of sustained attention studies use simple, artificial, and repetitive stimuli. ► Participants performed sustained attention tasks using complex, natural, and non-repetitive stimuli. ► Despite the novel stimuli, there was a vigilance decrement in a traditionally formatted vigil. ► Despite the novel stimuli, participants performed worse on a SART than have participants using simple stimuli. ► Sustained attention lapses are not due to task monotony per se, but mental fatigue.