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Category: Project

Description: This experiment examined how the modality of simple alerts—visual icons or auditory tones—affected performance of an on-going visual task. Participants (58 females and 4 males) tracked a visual target while performing a choice reaction time task in response to alerts. Visual alerts were more harmful to performance of the tracking task. Dual task workload was lowest with an auditory alert, provided there was not noise present. Interruptions affected tracking task performance for around 1500 ms. Results supported the predictions of Multiple Resources Theory and showed no evidence of auditory preemption. In practical applications for which an on-going visual task is interrupted, auditory alerts may be less disruptive and may reduce perceived workload.