Affects of Task Difficulty on Target Guidance Using Auditory and Tactile Cues

Abstract

Two dual-task experiments were conducted to compare guidance systems using tactile and/or auditory cues. The tasks were a targeting task and a shadowing task. In experiment one, the guidance cues matched the location of the targets actual position in space. In two, the cue to move left originated in front while the cue to move right originated from behind the subject. This was done to assess how increasing the difficulty of processing the cues affected performance. Little difference was found between the two systems on the targeting task in experiment one, but in experiment two the tactile system consistently outperformed the auditory system. This suggests that when processing modes are different, using the same sensory channel for two tasks has little affect on performance, but when processing difficulty is increased, using separate channels results in better performance.