International Community for Auditory Display

An experiment with two picture categorization tasks with auditory distracters containing redundant information was carried out to investigate the effects distracters, in this case earcons, have on categorization. In the first task participants had to carry out an extra mental addition task. The secondary task consisted of just the categorization. The dual-task situation was expected to lead to longer reaction times and more errors than the single-task situation, possibly providing new insights when analyzed. The results confirmed previous experimental results and indicated that significantly fewer errors were made in conditions in which the earcons contained relevant redundant information, compared to conditions with no relevant redundant information.