Quantifying the perceived urgency of auditory warnings

Abstract

Advanced auditory warning design based on Patterson's guidelines (1982) allows a degree of matching between a warning sound itself and the subjective response it elicits. One important parameter along which a warning and the subjective response can be matched is that of perceived urgency. In order to do this matching successfully, it is important to know the nature and the power of the effects of many spectral and temporal parameters. Three experiments are reported in which the effects of many spectral and temporal parameters. Three experiments are reported in which the effects of number of repetitions, warning speed and length upon perceived urgency were investigated. Results show that increases in all three parameters individually increased the perceived urgency of the stimulus. A fourth experiment tested a set of stimuli which varied in both number of repetitions and speed, whilst the length was held constant. This showed that large differences in the perceived urgency of a warning can be achieved over a fixed period of time. Steven's Power Law (1957) was applied to the data, enabling the power of the relationship between the objective value of the stimuli (number of repetitions, speed or length) and the subjective values of the warnings (the perceived urgency) to be quantified