Abstract
The task set of anesthesiologists, like those of operators in many data-rich work domains, is characterized by heavy demand for visual and auditory resources. Employing tactile displays can offload some of this demand, potentially improving performance in tasks related to patient care during surgery, such as monitoring and managing multiple physiological systems. The current study compared anesthesiologists’ performance in an immersive patient simulator under four different physiological data display configurations: standard visual and auditory displays alone, and with the addition of three different vibrotactile display designs. Findings show that physiological management performance improved with the vibrotactile displays, compared to with standard displays alone. The best performance was found with “continuously-informing” vibrotactile displays which increased signal salience as represented parameters approached unsafe levels. The findings from this study have implications for tactile display design, as well as the study of tactile and multimodal information processing in attentionally-demanding environments.
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