Development and evaluation of novel, information-rich auditory alerts to enhance the efficiency and
Abstract
In military conflict, as in other task-critical settings alerting stimuli must be perceived and distinguished-accurately, while dist,ractions are mitigated. Our research has focused on the detectability and salience of auditory alarms, multisensory input, and human, communication. Our work extends far beyond the study of simple alerting mechanisms. Much of our focus is on the "sonification of da,ta," i.e., using specialized sounds to convey critical information content in highly efficient manners. We have successfully develop,ed and implemented efficient, information-bearing auditory icon alarms, specifically, in the medical realm. The medical realm is a h,igh consequence industry and environment, akin to military environments in which warfighters operate. We have demonstrated that such, icon alarms produce more rapid and more accurate recognition than do conventional alarms while also being superior in terms of meas,urements of task load index and fatigue. Beyond conveying critical-information efficiently, we showed that the use of auditory icon, alarms results in enhanced performance in visual vigilance tasks of the type that typically dominate warfighters monitoring of sit,uational awareness.-Importantly, essential alarms/alerts can be designed to be highly effective even while being far less intense th,an background noise. The principles we discovered and published can be applied such that warfighters receive and respond to alerts/a,larms critical to situational awareness without alerting nearby hostile forces, all while improving mission-critical verbal communic,ation over that realized via conventional techniques. We have sought to determine what are the minimal sensory inputs required for r,eliable and efficient transfer of critical information in the visual domain (e.g., in low light/night SEAL type operations), and the, auditory domain (e.g., auditory icon alarms, speech intelligibility in high cognitive demand situations, such as aircraft carrier-b,ased operations). With proper application, these principles promise to advance warfighter performance as conflicts advance with tech,nology to keep our borders safe, protect Americans, and ensure unintended targets are not neutralized.-Our major goal is to develop, a range of auditory icons for the warfighter, encompassing necessary alarms, alerts, and commands. We will accomplish that via a st,rategy of conceptualization/development, and via the use of algorithms specifying the manners in which acoustic features of auditory, icon alarms are manipulated. The alarms so designed will run the gamut from intuitive to arbitrary information-bearing sounds. Thos,e efforts will be accompanied by training paradigms on novel auditory icons to enhance learning of and memory for them.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 16, 2022
- Source ID
- N000142212184
Entities
People
- Joseph Schlesinger Ii
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Vanderbilt University