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Comparison of Response to Visual and Auditory Digit Cues in Man–Machine System

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IAENG Transactions on Engineering Technologies

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering ((LNEE,volume 186))

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to compare response time to visual and auditory digit cues in the context of man–machine system. The effects of age, gender, education level, time spent on computer in daily life, left/right finger, and choice alternative on response time were also examined. A total of 69 right-handed Chinese participants took part in the visual and auditory stimuli tests. The result showed that the auditory response time was significantly shorter than that for visual cues. For both visual and auditory cues, in general, the response time decreased with an increase of age up to the 21–30 years, and thereafter it increased gradually with an increase of age. Females were found to respond faster than males. The response of tertiary and secondary education groups was faster than that of primary education group. Besides, the longer the time spent on computer in daily life, the shorter was the response time. In addition, the right finger response time was shorter than the left finger response time. The response on single-choice task was the fastest, followed by two-choice task and then four- and eight-choice tasks. Implications of the results on the design of alerting cue and man–machine system were discussed. The findings of this study would act as a useful reference for engineers and designers to realize how the visual and auditory modality channels could interfere the users, so as to design a more user-friendly human–machine-interface.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by a grant from the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU 110306). The authors would like to thank Chan Wing Kin for his help in the data collection process of the experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Annie W. Y. Ng & Alan H. S. Chan

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  1. Annie W. Y. Ng
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  2. Alan H. S. Chan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Annie W. Y. Ng .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Multimedia Engineering, Mokpo National University, Dorim-ri, MuanGun 61, Chonnam, 534-729, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

    Gi-Chul Yang

  2. , Unit 1, 1/F, International Association of Engineers, Hung To Road, Hong Kong, 37-39, Hong Kong SAR

    Sio-Iong Ao

  3. , Faculty of Information Sciences and Engi, University of Canberra, Building 11, Room A17, Bruce ACT, 2601, Australia

    Xu Huang

  4. , Calzada Tecnologico s/n, Tijuana Institute of Technology, Fracc. Tomas Aquino CP, Tijuana, 22379, Mexico

    Oscar Castillo

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Ng, A.W.Y., Chan, A.H.S. (2013). Comparison of Response to Visual and Auditory Digit Cues in Man–Machine System. In: Yang, GC., Ao, SI., Huang, X., Castillo, O. (eds) IAENG Transactions on Engineering Technologies. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 186. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5651-9_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5651-9_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-5623-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-5651-9

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