Attention Orienting in Augmented Reality Environments: Effects of Multimodal Cues

Abstract

The accuracy and efficiency of visual, auditory, and tactile cues to orient attention were tested under different levels of workload. Nineteen participants took part in an experiment in which they performed a visual, auditory, or tactile cueing task under both low and high workload conditions. Results showed that under high workload, both visual cues alone and tactile cues alone improved target detection accuracy. In the low workload condition, perceived workload estimates were lower when tactile cues were present than when absent. These results indicate the benefits of both visual and tactile cues in target detection tasks. These findings have implications for training, systems design, and human performance assessment.