Effects of Various Visual and Auditory Information Upon Reaction Time of Direction Judgment -A Study on Cognition of Environmental Information from the Viewpoint of Cross Modal Effect-

Abstract

In the way finding system, visual and auditory information should be easily understood, and one information should not disturb the other. In the present study, the effects of additional information upon reaction time to simultaneously presented auditory and visual information was investigated. The results suggest that participants collated simultaneously presented information in order to make judgment. As compared with judgment based on a single piece of presented information, under some circumstances, the act of collation sped up reaction time, whereas in other circumstances collation slowed down this process. The following three conclusions can be drawn. 1) Reaction time decreases when additional information is easier to process than the information that the participant is tasked to focus on. 2) Reaction time increases when additional information is more complex than the information that the participant is tasked to focus on. 3) If the additional information requires a long processing time, collation of information does not occur, and reaction time does not differ from that of the reaction time when not presented with additional information.