Fast and Accurate Guidance - Response Times to Navigational Sounds

Route guidance systems are used every day by both, sighted and visually impaired people. Systems, such as those built into cars and smart phones, usually using speech to direct the user towards their desired location. Sounds other than functional and speech sounds can, however, be used for directing people in distinct directions. The present paper compares response times with different stimuli and error rates in the detection. Functional sounds are chosen with and without intrinsic meanings, musical connotations, and stereo locations. Panned sine tones are identified as the fastest and most correctly identified stimuli in the test while speech is not identified faster than arbitrary sounds that have no particular meaning.