Abstract:

In order to study the interaction of the auditory and visual systems, a series of experiments has been designed. The first experiment was completed in 1994 and recently published [Perrott et al., Human Factors 38(4), 702--715 (1996)]. This initial experiment explored auditory-aided visual search with a single high-contrast target and a dark background. The results demonstrated a distinct advantage in visual target acquisition with the addition of a correlated directional audio cue. The objective of this experiment was to develop a function describing the effects of directional auditory cueing on searh times in visual fields of varying complexity. Visual conditions included 1, 5, 10, 25, or 50 distracters randomly distributed. The locations of the targets and distracters ranged between (plus or minus)180(degrees) in azimuth and between -75(degrees) and +90(degrees) in elevation. The three auditory conditions included no auditory cue, a free-field cue, and a virtual cue. In each case, the stimulus was pink noise (20--20 000 Hz). Results will be presented which show the effect of the number of distracters on search times with and without auditory cues. [Work supported by AFOSR.]