The Effect of Sonification Pulse Rate on Perceived Urgency and Response Behaviors

Abstract

Emergency signal researchers have devoted considerable energy to understanding the perceived urgency and performance effects of reliable and marginally reliable discrete auditory signals. Relatively little attention has been paid to aspects of continuous auditory displays. The purpose of the current study was to demonstrate and document the effects of sonification presentation rate on perceived urgency and response behaviors during a simulated patient monitoring task. As expected, participants rated shorter interpulse intervals as being significantly more urgent than longer pulse intervals. Participants also responded faster to patient problems when interacting with a sonification system that used shorter pulse intervals.

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