Maintenance of Alertness by a Loud Auditory Signal

Abstract

An extremely serious operational problem is the maintenance of a high level of visual target detection performance during long periods of watch. Will a loud auditory signal aid in the maintenance of a high performance level under these conditions? Apparently, it will. When the failure to detect a target was coupled with the occurrence of the blast of a truck horn, average visual target detection percentages increased substantially, especially for the less proficient observers.