AUDITORY ICONS FOR COLLISION-AVOIDANCE WARNINGS

The auditory modality has particular advantages over the visual or haptic for collision-avoidance warnings, including increased reaction times and eyes-free use. It has been argued that "auditory icons," conveying information about system events by analogy with everyday events, can further improve these benefits. To test these assumptions, an experiment was carried out to compare the effects of conventional auditory collision warnings with auditory icon warnings in terms of reaction times and driver preferences.