Spatial Audio for Multimodal Location Monitoring

Abstract

Abstract Location monitoring is a common task that is typically performed using visual displays that may constrain user location and visual attention. Using spatial audio to present the location of the monitored target could help relax such constraints. To evaluate this hypothesis, we conducted three experiments in which the location monitoring display modality, location, cognitive load and the task spatial resolution were varied. Visual and audiovisual location monitoring resulted in a higher location monitoring accuracy and speed but it induced a significantly higher dual-task cost compared to auditory when both displays were not within peripheral vision. Furthermore, auditory location monitoring accuracy approximated visual when the spatial resolution required by the task was adapted to auditory localization accuracy. The results show that using spatial audio to create multimodal location monitoring can reduce visual attention load and increase the flexibility of user placement relative to the monitoring display without incurring an additional location monitoring cost.