Auditory-Visual Redundancy in Vehicle Control Interruptions: Two Meta-analyses

Abstract

Two novel versions of a meta analysis were employed to assess the conditions of ongoing vehicle control task simulations in which (1) auditory presentation of an interrupting task were beneficial over visual presentations and (2) redundant (av) presentation was better than single modality presentation (providing redundancy gain). Altogether 29 studies were identified. The results revealed that the interrupting task benefited from auditory presentation, but the ongoing task (visual vehicle control task) generally did not. Performance of the visual interrupting task was slightly hindered by separation from the ongoing task. The redundancy analysis revealed that the interrupting task benefited from redundancy when it involved spatial localization and alerting and the accuracy of verbal communications; but suffered when speed of the verbal communications response was measured, and when the two visual channels were separated. Implications for multi-modal presentation of information on vehicle workstations are discussed.

The Multimodal Evaluation Module: Design and Validation of a Model-Based Tool to Predict Pilot Noticing of Multimodal Information on the Flight Deck

“…These reviews are reported individually (Lu et al, 2011;Wickens et al, 2011). In summary, these reviews compared operator performance in an on-going visual/manual task context (e.g., flying, driving, tracking).…”

Redundancy Gains in Communication Tasks: A Comparison of Auditory, Visual, and Redundant Auditory-Visual Information Presentation on NextGen Flight Decks

“…The absence of redundancy gains in these studies may be explained by the following three factors: (1) redundant information presentation can require more processing time, (2) the auditory component of visualauditory pairings may divert attention away from an ongoing task, and (3) the contents of two messages that are presented in different channels may not be synchronized in time, and hence be difficult to fuse (Wickens et al, 2011). Overall, redundancy gains or costs appear to depend on the details of the experimental setup and the variables that were manipulated in each study.…”

Improving shift handovers between medical residents : the effect of information access cost, metacognition and media affordances

“…The visual advantage could have resulted from the affordance of reviewability -the operator can use vision to quickly scan the forgotten information especially when the length of message is challenging working memory (Wickens, Goh, Helleberg, Horrey, & Talleur, 2003;Wickens & Gosney, 2003). In two recent studies, Wickens and colleagues (Lu et al, 2013;Wickens, Prinet, Hutchins, Sarter, & Sebok, 2011) conducted meta-analyses of 68 and 29 studies on task performance as a function of interrupting task modality. The two studies showed that the communication accuracy of the interrupting tasks (which is of interest for the dissertation) enjoyed a significant redundancy gain against the best single modality component (almost always auditory).…”

“…With a medium supporting high level of reviewability, like text, handover participants can easily refer back and forth to any information during a handover. It supports conversational context and allows handoff participants to allocate more cognitive resources to interpret and synthesize information being handed over Lu et al, 2013;Wickens et al, 2011).…”

“…Therefore, the presentation or even the sequence of presentation of the auditory information may not synchronize with the eye fixation of each text-based message. Such a "fusing failure" (Wickens et al, 2011) could be quite disruptive, increasing the difficulty to synthesize and comprehend information, in a way that could offset the advantage of the redundancy of channels.…”