ABSTRACT
In recent years interface operators have been presented with increasingly complex visual working environments. This has led many human factors researchers to resort to the auditory channel as an alternative, or supplementary, means of information transfer. However, little consideration has been given to possible limits on an operator’s ability to process information presented simultaneously to different sensory modalities (e.g. to audition and vision). We highlight several recent studies from cognitive psychology which help to elucidate and quantify the nature of these limitations on multimodal information processing. The main findings are that: (i) people respond more slowly to visual stimuli when required simultaneously to monitor, or attend to, the auditory channel; (ii) people find it easier to process concurrent auditory and visual streams of information when they are presented from the same location; and (iii) auditory warning signals are more effective at attracting attention to positions than visual signals.
