ABSTRACT
The present series of experiments tested the assimilation and efficacy of purposecreated tactile messages based on five common military arm and hand signals. We compared the response times and accuracy rates to these tactile representations against the comparable responses to equivalent visual representations of these same messages. Results indicated that there was a performance benefit for concurrent message presentations which showed superior response times and improved accuracy rates when compared to individual presentations in either modality. Such improvement was identified as being due largely to a reduction in pre-motor response time and these improvements occurred equally in a military and nonmilitary population. Results were not contingent upon the gender of the participant. Potential reasons for this multi-modal facilitation are discussed. The novel techniques employed to measure pre-motor response inform computational neuroergonomic models for multi-modal advantages in dynamic signaling. On a practical
level, these results confirm the utility of tactile messaging to augment visual messaging, especially in challenging and stressful environments where visual messaging may not always be feasible or effective.
