Visual Cues Such as Texting Beneficial in Extreme Auditory Overload

Military personnel who are often exposed to extreme auditory overload benefit from adding a visual cue such as texting, according to a new study.

According to the new study, military people are exposed to extreme auditory overload emerging from multiple messages of radio networks, loudspeakers, or live voices from the environment, flooded with high level-noise from weapons and vehicles. In these cases, texting proves helpful.

This new technique to overcome the problem of auditory overload was explored by a team of Canadian researchers.

According to Sharon Abel, defense scientist at Defence Research and Development Canada, it is important in a military operation that every message is monitored, encoded, responded to and communicated correctly in a timely manner so as to guarantee personnel safety, situational awareness and the success of the mission.

To prove their hypothesis, researchers conducted two different experiments. In the first test, they investigated the benefit of having a visual cue in order to direct the listener's concentration to an audio channel conveying a target message. Participants were placed in a mock-up military land vehicle where they were exposed to multiple messages through right and left earphone via a headset and loudspeakers. Variables included were background of quiet or vehicle noise, presence or absence of a babble noise that modeled surrounding conversation, and with or without visual cues.

In the second test, the team examined the benefits of instant messaging as a supplement to audio presentation of information, where participants were given two simultaneous tasks. They listened to a pair of phrases in the right and left headset earphone, and at the same time had to decide whether the math equation presented as a text message was right.  

"Participants had no difficulty responding to messages presented over the headset, although, there was a right ear advantage," Abel explains. "We discovered that messages presented over a loudspeaker in noise were more difficult to understand. But a visual cue directing attention and text messaging resulted in significant improvements in performance. Our findings suggest that the use of the visual system is a viable supplement for communication in cases of auditory overload or degraded listening."

The finding is specifically relevant to military operations, and may also prove to be useful to other civilian trades that deal with processing auditory information from numerous sources.

The study findings will be presented at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013).