RESUMEN
The aim of this study was to explore operator experience and performance for semantically congruent and incongruent auditory icons and abstract alarm sounds. It was expected that performance advantages for congruent sounds would be present initially but would reduce over time for both alarm types. Twenty-four participants (12M/12F) were placed into auditory icon or abstract alarm groupings. For each group both congruent and incongruent alarms were used to represent different driving task scenarios. Once sounded, participants were required to respond to each alarm by selecting a corresponding driving scenario. User performance for all sound types improved over time, however even with experience a decrement in speed of response remained for the incongruent iconic sounds and in accuracy of performance for the abstract warning sounds when compared to the congruent auditory icons. Semantic congruency was found to be of more importance for auditory icons than for abstract sounds. Practitioner Summary: Alarms are used in many operating systems as emergency, alerting, or continuous monitoring signals for instance. This study found that the type and representativeness of an auditory warning will influence operator performance over time. Semantically congruent iconic sounds produced performance advantages over both incongruent iconic sounds and abstract warnings.
Asunto(s)
Estimulación Acústica/psicología , Atención/fisiología , Percepción Auditiva/fisiología , Conducción de Automóvil/psicología , Semántica , Estimulación Acústica/métodos , Adulto , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Tiempo de Reacción/fisiología , SonidoRESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: This research examined the relative importance of icon characteristics in determining the speed and accuracy of icon identification. BACKGROUND: Studies to date have focused on the role of one or two icon characteristics when users first experience an icon set. This means that little is known about the relative importance of icon characteristics or how the role of icon characteristics might change as users gain experience with icons. METHODS: Thirty participants carried out an icon identification task over a long series of trials to simulate learning through experience. Icon characteristics investigated included semantic distance, concreteness, familiarity, and visual complexity. RESULTS: Icon characteristics were major determinants of performance, accounting for up to 69% of the variance observed in performance. However, the importance of icon characteristics changed with experience: Semantic distance is crucial initially while icon-function relationships are learned, but familiarity is important later because it has lasting effects on access to long-term memory representations. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that icon concreteness may not be of primary importance when identifying icons and that semantic distance and familiarity may be more important. APPLICATION: Designers need to take into account icon characteristics other than concreteness when creating icons, particularly semantic distance and familiarity. The precise importance of the latter characteristics will vary depending on whether icons are rarely encountered or frequently used.