Assessing the Effectiveness of Various Auditory Cues in Capturing a Driver's Visual Attention.

Abstract

This study was designed to assess the potential benefits of using spatial auditory warning signals in a simulated driving task. In particular, the authors assessed the possible facilitation of responses (braking or accelerating) to potential emergency driving situations (the rapid approach of a car from the front or from behind) seen through the windshield or the rearview mirror. Across 5 experiments, the authors assessed the efficacy of nonspatial-nonpredictive (neutral), spatially nonpredictive (50% valid), and spatially predictive (80% valid) car horn sounds, as well as symbolic predictive and spatially presented symbolic predictive verbal cues (the words "front" or "back") in directing the participant's visual attention to the relevant direction. The results suggest that spatially predictive semantically meaningful auditory warning signals may provide a particularly effective means of capturing attention.

Verbal-Spatial Cue Conflict: Implications for the Design of Collision-Avoidance Warning Systems

“…The results of this study support those of Ho and Spence (2005), indicating that congruent verbal-spatial directional information leads to a faster response than non-spatial information. Additionally, verbal directional information results in a faster response than non-verbal directional information.…”

“…Specifically, participants were less accurate when responding to the location of a word, and therefore trying to ignore conflicting semantic information. This further supports Ho and Spence's (2005) results that show the importance of verbal directional cues over non-verbal spatial directional cues in terms of improving performance -the decrease in accuracy demonstrates that attempting to ignore the semantic content of a conflicting stimulus was more difficult than attempting to ignore the spatial location.…”

“…While the results of this and other studies (Ho & Spence, 2005) support the benefit of having a congruent verbal-spatial directional cue for alerting drivers to an impending collision, there is the potential for a huge cost. If the spatial directional information from the collision avoidance system were to conflict with other verbal directional information present in the vehicle, these results predict that making the correct response to the collision avoidance warning would be more difficult, possibly resulting in the wrong response.…”

“…The relative benefit of alerting drivers to the relevant location of a hazard with spatial versus semantic audio cues remains a question of interest. Ho and Spence (2005) found that participants responded faster to verbal directional cues than they did to non-verbal directional cues, indicating that the semantic information provided by the verbal directional cue was processed more quickly than spatial information provided by the non-verbal directional cue. However, when the two cues were combined to create a congruent verbal-spatial directional cue, participants responded faster still.…”

“…Collision avoidance warning systems are an important component of this effort (Ho & Spence, 2005;Wang, Pick, Proctor, & Ye, 2007). The most effective means by which to alert drivers remains a point of debate, but research has shown that spatial auditory cues speed reaction time to stimuli and that multi-modal directional cues can speed reaction time even further (Bolia, et al, 1999;Gondan, et al, 2005;Tannen, et al, 2004).…”