Exploring Residual Capacity

Abstract

Abstract. Alarm systems may take advantage of the tactile modality for allocation of attentional resources during the performance of demanding tasks in complex environments. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a tactile warning during increasing levels of mental workload in a primary task. Three simulated flight task conditions varying in mental workload were presented while an “on-thigh” vibrotactile warning was randomly assessed. Generally, there was a decrement in overall warning response performance when task workload increased, but this tendency faded and plateaued as the level of task workload progressed. The observed pattern indicates that vibrotactile warning signals may offer a plausible mode for conveying information during increasing levels of primary task workload.

Exploration of multimodal alarms for civil aircraft flying task: A laboratory study

“…and Rosa et al (2020). Additionally, a significant number of alarmrelated issues have been documented during high-workload segments of flights, as reported by Bliss (2003).…”

“…This is in accordance with the MRT, wherein different modalities characterize separate attentional resources. In this study, the tactile modality was considered a separate resource, resulting in the proposed concept that cross-modal tasks and information presentation may improve task-sharing performance (Rosa et al, 2020). In this study, the LRC condition was selected based on the situation in which the operators had just conducted a normal task that occupied their VA resources.…”

“…Although the potential of the VAT alarm was explored under the LRC condition in the take-off mission of civil aircrafts, the residual capacities of the participants were not sufficiently low in terms of the complexity and urgency of the dual-task scenario. Thus, the participants had some resources to handle sudden alarms, as stated by Rosa et al (2020), and there was an unused residual capacity that could be used to perform the tasks. Therefore, a time benefit of 1.6 s was obtained for the CRTs.…”

“…It should be noted that in practical applications, tactile alarms should be used in rare and crisis situations, for example, the stick shaker during stall attitude is a unique warning, and it is only activated during this special condition (Rosa et al, 2020). In this manner, a tactile alarm can have a specific meaning, that is, an emergency.…”

“…Notably, the simple multimodal alarms in this study were only used to guide participants' attention and lacked combination with primary task demands or subsequent actions. Hence, further studies should focus on enhancing the ecological validity of on-thigh vibrotactile warnings by coupling them with specific requirements for primary tasks (Rosa et al, 2020). The amount of dual-task interference is determined by the duration of the two tasks competing for the same resource.…”