In Psychology, the vigilance is a form of the Attention of an individual achieving a particular task.

Its attention takes an aspect of intensity to request the whole of its capacities of Perception and to concentrate them on the course of the task.

The vigilance which is spread spontaneously is an good indicator of Motivation in much of situations.

In Neurologie one is interested more particularly in the overdrawn aspects of vigilance. The level of vigilance can be evaluated by various scales and is used to classify deteriorations of the state of consciousness. Most known of the rating scales of vigilance is the scale of Glasgow, used in particular in neuro- Traumatologie to determine the depth of a Coma.

Certain spiritual and philosophical currents call vigilance the state of not directed attention (see Méditation). Contrary to the meaning of the field of psychology, this attention is not concentrated on a task or an object, but " ouverte" on the whole of the field perceptive, as well external as intern (environment visual, auditive, breathing, pains, itchings, etc…). The subject is thus receptive with the totality of its environment.