Computational Models for the Effects of Localized Sound Cuing in a Complex Dual Task
Abstract
This report covers the modeling work performed in conjunction with a project at the Naval Research Laboratory, carried out by James Ballas, exploring the effects of using spatialized sound as a task cue in a visually-presented dual task setting that demonstrated an 'automation deficit' effect, This effect is temporarily impaired performance when an automated task must be resumed by the human operator. Previous work on modeling this task and automation deficit effect led to the conclusion that the deficit effect was due to ambiguity in the visual display concerning which task event had priority for the operator's attention. An hypothesis was that providing an auditory cue to supplement the visual display, in the form of synthetically localized sound, should allow the operator to attend to the highest-priority event, and thus mitigate the automation deficit effect. The observed results weakly supported this hypothesis, but a better characterization is that the use of localized sound led to a consistent, but small, effect of faster responding across the board. Additional modeling work suggests that the only simple explanation for this pattern of effects is that the onset of localized sound can produce a reflexive eye movement to the sound source. The magnitude of the effect is consistent with psychophysical tasks on the facilitation of visual choice reaction tasks by localized sound stimuli.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 31, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA390852
Entities
People
- David E. Meyer
- David Kieras
- James Ballas
Organizations
- University of Michigan