Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether representational sounds that capture the richness of experience of a collision enhance performance in braking to avoid a collision relative to other forms of warnings in a driving simulator. Background: There is increasing interest in auditory warnings that are informative about their referents. But as well as providing information about some intended object, warnings may be designed to set the occasion for a rich body of information about the outcomes of behavior in a particular context. These richly informative warnings may offer performance advantages, as they may be rapidly processed by users. Method: An auditory occasion setter for a collision (a recording of screeching brakes indicating imminent collision) was compared with two other auditory warnings (an abstract and an “environmental” sound), a speech message, a visual display, and no warning in a fixed-base driving simulator as interfaces to a collision avoidance system. The main measure was braking response times at each of two headways (1.5 s and 3 s) to a lead vehicle. Results: The occasion setter demonstrated statistically significantly faster braking responses at each headway in 8 out of 10 comparisons (with braking responses equally fast to the abstract warning at 1.5 s and the environmental warning at 3 s). Conclusion: Auditory displays that set the occasion for an outcome in a particular setting and for particular behaviors may offer small but critical performance enhancements in time-critical applications. Application: The occasion setter could be applied in settings where speed of response by users is of the essence.
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