Impaired wakefulness of machine operators presents a danger not only for themselves, but often for the public at large as well. While on duty, such persons are expected to be continuously, i.e. without interruption, on the alert. For that purpose, we designed and carried out an experimental model of continuous vigilance monitoring using electroencephalography (EEG) and reaction time measured as the latency of the volunteers’ reaction to a sound stimulus. In this article, we focus on two different approaches of EEG signal analysis. Spectral analysis, which is based on linear stochastic approach, is the hrst type. On the other hand, there is nonlinear analysis formally called the chaos theory. For both methods, we will show typical markers which represent the state of the vigilance. Both methods will be compared and the outputs will be discussed.