Spatial release from speech-on-speech masking in the median sagittal plane.

Several studies have described a release from speech-on-speech masking associated with separation of target and masker sources in the median sagittal plane. Some have excluded the possibility that small differences between target and masker interaural time disparities can fully account for this release. This study explored the mechanisms underlying the spatial release from speech-on-speech masking that can be obtained in the absence of such differences.

Characterizing team performance in network-centric operations: philosophical and methodological issues.

The recently promulgated doctrine of network-centric warfare suggests that increases in shared situation awareness and self-synchronization will be emergent properties of densely connected military networks. What it fails to say is how these enhancements are to be measured. The present article frames the discussion as a question of how to characterize team performance, and considers such performance in the context of its hypothetical components: situation awareness, workload, and error.

Target acquisition with UAVs: vigilance displays and advanced cuing interfaces.

Vigilance and threat detection are critical human factors considerations in the control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Utilizing a vigilance task in which threat detections (critical signals) led observers to perform a subsequent manual target acquisition task, this study provides information that might have important implications for both of these considerations in the design of future UAV systems. A sensory display format resulted in more threat detections, fewer false alarms, and faster target acquisition times and imposed a lighter workload than did a cognitive display format.

The impact of hearing protection on sound localization and orienting behavior.

The effect of hearing protection devices (HPDs) on sound localization was examined in the context of an auditory-cued visual search task. Participants were required to locate and identify a visual target in a field of 5, 20, or 50 visual distractors randomly distributed on the interior surface of a sphere. Four HPD conditions were examined: earplugs, earmuffs, both earplugs and earmuffs simultaneously (double hearing protection), and no hearing protection.