In-flight spatial disorientation induces roll reversal errors when using the attitude indicator.

We hypothesized that an incorrect expectation due to spatial disorientation may induce roll reversal errors. To test this, an in-flight experiment was performed, in which forty non-pilots rolled wings level after receiving motion cues. A No-leans condition (subthreshold motion to a bank angle) was included, as well as a Leans-opposite condition (leans cues, opposite to the bank angle) and a Leans-level condition (leans cues, but level flight).

Training Pilots for Unexpected Events: A Simulator Study on the Advantage of Unpredictable and Variable Scenarios.

Objective: This study tested whether simulator-based training of pilot responses to unexpected or novel events can be improved by including unpredictability and variability in training scenarios.

Background: Current regulations allow for highly predictable and invariable training, which may not be sufficient to prepare pilots for unexpected or novel situations in-flight. Training for surprise will become mandatory in the near future.

Type of activity and order of experimental conditions affect noise annoyance by identifiable and unidentifiable transportation noise.

Previous studies have shown that identifiability of sound sources influence noise annoyance levels. The aim of the present experiment was to additionally study the effects of actively performing a task versus a less active pastime on noise annoyance. This was done by asking participants to perform a task (task condition) or read a magazine of their choice (no-task condition), while listening to identifiable and unidentifiable samples of transportation noise at varying sound exposure levels (55-85 ASEL).

Dealing With Unexpected Events on the Flight Deck: A Conceptual Model of Startle and Surprise.

Objective: A conceptual model is proposed in order to explain pilot performance in surprising and startling situations.

Background: Today's debate around loss of control following in-flight events and the implementation of upset prevention and recovery training has highlighted the importance of pilots' ability to deal with unexpected events. Unexpected events, such as technical malfunctions or automation surprises, potentially induce a "startle factor" that may significantly impair performance.

Annoyance by transportation noise: The effects of source identity and tonal components.

Aircraft noise is consistently rated as more annoying than noise from other sources with similar intensity. In three experiments, it was investigated whether this penalty is due to the source identity of the noise. In the first experiment, four samples were played to participants engaged in a working memory task: road traffic noise, an Airbus 320 flyover, and unidentifiable, transformed versions of these samples containing the same spectral content and envelope.

Using neurophysiological signals that reflect cognitive or affective state: six recommendations to avoid common pitfalls.

Estimating cognitive or affective state from neurophysiological signals and designing applications that make use of this information requires expertise in many disciplines such as neurophysiology, machine learning, experimental psychology, and human factors. This makes it difficult to perform research that is strong in all its aspects as well as to judge a study or application on its merits. On the occasion of the special topic "Using neurophysiological signals that reflect cognitive or affective state" we here summarize often occurring pitfalls and recommendations on how to avoid them, both for authors (researchers) and readers.

The cocktail-party problem revisited: early processing and selection of multi-talker speech.

How do we recognize what one person is saying when others are speaking at the same time? This review summarizes widespread research in psychoacoustics, auditory scene analysis, and attention, all dealing with early processing and selection of speech, which has been stimulated by this question. Important effects occurring at the peripheral and brainstem levels are mutual masking of sounds and "unmasking" resulting from binaural listening. Psychoacoustic models have been developed that can predict these effects accurately, albeit using computational approaches rather than approximations of neural processing.

Attentional switches and dual-task interference.

In four experiments, we studied the time course of interference between detection of an oddball orientation target (OT) in an 8-item circular search display, and identification of a letter target (LT) in a central stream of distractor letters. Dual-task performance for different temporal lags between targets was compared to single-task performance. When the LT preceded the OT, dual-task performance levels were reduced at short inter-target intervals of 0 and 166 ms; when the OT preceded the LT, the dual-task interference was unexpectedly stronger and lasted for up to 500 ms.

Attentional requirements on feature search are modulated by stimulus properties.

We report a series of dual-task experiments, in which a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task was combined with a visual search task. Orientation, motion, and color were used as the defining target features in the search task. Lag between target onsets was manipulated and interference between the two tasks was quantified by measuring detection scores for the search task as a function of lag.

Attention and the multiple stages of multisensory integration: A review of audiovisual studies.

Multisensory integration and crossmodal attention have a large impact on how we perceive the world. Therefore, it is important to know under what circumstances these processes take place and how they affect our performance. So far, no consensus has been reached on whether multisensory integration and crossmodal attention operate independently and whether they represent truly automatic processes.

Auditory and visual capture during focused visual attention.

It is well known that auditory and visual onsets presented at a particular location can capture a person's visual attention. However, the question of whether such attentional capture disappears when attention is focused endogenously beforehand has not yet been answered. Moreover, previous studies have not differentiated between capture by onsets presented at a nontarget (invalid) location and possible performance benefits occurring when the target location is (validly) cued.

Competition between auditory and visual spatial cues during visual task performance.

There is debate in the crossmodal cueing literature as to whether capture of visual attention by means of sound is a fully automatic process. Recent studies show that when visual attention is endogenously focused sound still captures attention. The current study investigated whether there is interaction between exogenous auditory and visual capture.

Poke and pop: tactile-visual synchrony increases visual saliency.

The majority of studies investigating interactions between vision and touch have typically explored single events, presenting one object at a time. The present study investigates how tactile-visual interactions affect competition between multiple visual objects in more dynamic cluttered environments. Participants searched for a horizontal or vertical line segment among distractor line segments of various orientations, all continuously changing color.

Audiovisual events capture attention: evidence from temporal order judgments.

Is an irrelevant audiovisual event able to guide attention automatically? In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked to make a temporal order judgment (TOJ) about which of two dots (left or right) appeared first. In Experiment 3, participants were asked to make a simultaneity judgment (SJ) instead. Such tasks have been shown to be affected by attention.

Pip and pop: nonspatial auditory signals improve spatial visual search.

Searching for an object within a cluttered, continuously changing environment can be a very time-consuming process. The authors show that a simple auditory pip drastically decreases search times for a synchronized visual object that is normally very difficult to find. This effect occurs even though the pip contains no information on the location or identity of the visual object.

Priming T2 in a visual and auditory attentional blink task.

Participants performed an attentional blink (AB) task including digits as targets and letters as distractors within the visual and auditory domains. Prior to the rapid serial visual presentation, a visual or auditory prime was presented in the form of a digit that was identical to the second target (T2) on 50% of the trials. In addition to the "classic" AB effect, an overall drop in performance on T2 was observed for the trials on which the stream was preceded by an identical prime from the same modality.

Speech perception and talker segregation: effects of level, pitch, and tactile support with multiple simultaneous talkers.

Speech intelligibility was investigated by varying the number of interfering talkers, level, and mean pitch differences between target and interfering speech, and the presence of tactile support. In a first experiment the speech-reception threshold (SRT) for sentences was measured for a male talker against a background of one to eight interfering male talkers or speech noise. Speech was presented diotically and vibro-tactile support was given by presenting the low-pass-filtered signal (0-200 Hz) to the index finger.

Using the Speech Transmission Index for predicting non-native speech intelligibility.

While the Speech Transmission Index (STI) is widely applied for prediction of speech intelligibility in room acoustics and telecommunication engineering, it is unclear how to interpret STI values when non-native talkers or listeners are involved. Based on subjectively measured psychometric functions for sentence intelligibility in noise, for populations of native and non-native communicators, a correction function for the interpretation of the STI is derived. This function is applied to determine the appropriate STI ranges with qualification labels ("bad"-"excellent"), for specific populations of non-natives.

Contribution of spectral cues to human sound localization.

The contribution of spectral cues to human sound localization was investigated by removing cues in 1/2-, 1- or 2-octave bands in the frequency range above 4 kHz. Localization responses were given by placing an acoustic pointer at the same apparent position as a virtual target. The pointer was generated by filtering a 100-ms harmonic complex with equalized head-related transfer functions (HRTFs).

Evaluation of context effects in sentence recognition.

It was investigated whether the model for context effects, developed earlier by Bronkhorst et al. [J. Acoust.