Localizable auditory warning pulses

Abstract

Three important forms of information available to the listener may be identified in any auditory warning: what (semantic), where (location) and when (perceived urgency). Each form is addressed in the present design study of auditory warning pulses. Recordings were made via a dummy head, and were presented dichotically to listeners in a left/right localization task. The first experiment identified a suitable notched noise component for providing location information in the pulse stimulus. The second experiment required participants to simultaneously identify a distinct tonal signature and the location of the sound when they were presented with one of three tonal types, or one of three compound (tone plus noise) stimuli. Response accuracy and response latency for this identification and localization task were significantly better with the compound than with tone alone stimuli. Perceived urgency of compound complex tone plus noise stimuli was investigated in the third experiment. While there may be a trade-off between localization acuity and perceived urgency, the addition of noise components to the auditory warning pulse was shown to enhance the location information available to the listener. It is suggested that some auditory warning designs will benefit from the simultaneous provision of what and where forms of information in the sounds.

Multisensory warning signals for event perception and safe driving

“…Meanwhile, other researchers have reported favourably on the potential use of directional sounds in confined spaces (e.g. Doyle and Snowden 1999, Catchpole et al 2004. Finally, it often takes time for interface operators to learn the arbitrary association between a particular auditory earcon and the appropriate response, as the perceived urgency is transmitted by the physical characteristics of the warning signal itself (such as the rate of presentation, the fundamental frequency of the sound and/or its loudness, etc.…”

Multisensory interface design for drivers: past, present and future

“…Much of the research in this area continues to focus on the question of how to design warning signals that are both localisable and meaningful, while at the same time have the right level of perceived urgency (and are presented at the right time) for a variety of application domains (e.g. for everything from the car to the cockpit; Arrabito et al 2004, Catchpole et al 2004, Ho and Spence 2005. The importance of such developments is highlighted by the results of the recent 100-car naturalistic driving study (see Klauer et al 2006), in which it was found that 78% of all crashes and 65% of all nearmisses observed during the year-long study involved the driver looking away from the forward roadway in the moments just prior to the incident.…”

The Recognizability and Localizability of Auditory Alarms: Setting Global Medical Device Standards

“…Very generally speaking, the more harmonically dense a sound is, the easier it will be both to localize and to provide resistance to masking. The small amount of research specifically concerning the localizability of alarm sounds which does exist (Alali, 2011;Vaillancourt, Nélisse et al, 2013;Catchpole, McKeown & Withington, 2004 demonstrates that more harmonically rich and dense sounds produce better localization, or fewer errors in localization. Broadband noise performs particularly well.…”