Auditory affordances in the intensive treatment unit.
This paper describes the study of auditory affordances in the intensive treatment unit (ITU). The study compared representative sounds with traditional auditory warnings. Recognition performance for both the new and old warnings was compared. Recognition performance of the ITU staff was worse with the new set than with the old set of warnings, whereas the reverse was found with non-ITU staff. This suggests that although previous experience of the alarms aid recognition, there might be other more intuitive sounds which could be used on the ITU.
Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Highfield, UK.
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N
Stanton
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J
Edworthy
D004868:Equipment Failure; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units; D008297:Male; D010865:Pilot Projects; D017751:Safety Management; D013016:Sound