Abstract
Changes in alarm perception and response after prolonged daily exposure is not well studied due to the difficulties in setting up rigorous longitudinal studies in real work domains. A prime example of this is the absence of research studying how conveyed urgency and identifiability of auditory alarms change over time. We conducted a three-year study to understand how alarm performance with respect to these two measures changed over time, ostensibly due to prolonged nurse exposure. Gaining a better understanding of the relationship between these two aspects of a sound’s sensory dimension could be extremely valuable to acoustical alarm designers, as it allows them to anticipate changes in the sounds’ sensory performance over time, and not be overly sensitive to first impressions of the auditory alarm set.
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