Effects of visual and auditory cues about threat location on target acquisition and attention to auditory communications

Abstract

This laboratory study examined the effects of visual, spatial language, and 3-D audio cues about target location on target acquisition performance and the recall of information contained in concurrent radio communications. Two baseline conditions were also included in the analysis: no cues (baseline 1) and target presence cues only (baseline 2). In modes in which target location cues were provided, 100% of the targets presented were acquired compared to 94% in baseline 1 and 95% in baseline 2. On average, targets were acquired 1.4 seconds faster in the visual, spatial language, and 3-D audio modes than in the baseline conditions, with times in the visual and 3-D audio modes being 1 second faster than those in spatial language. Overall workload scores were lower in the 3-D audio mode than in all other conditions except the visual mode. Less information (23%) was recalled from auditory communications in baseline 1 than in the other four conditions where attention could be directed to communications between target presentations.