Effects of control button arrangements on human response to auditory and visual signals

In this paper, a laboratory experiment was designed to compare reaction time (RT), movement time (MT), and operation error rate (OER) to auditory and visual signals at different control button arrangements. The target signals were generated by use of different pure tones of frequencies or different colors of lights in this study. A computer program was developed to generate an auditory or visual signal from a computer monitor or loudspeaker. Fifty university students (25 females and 25 males) participated as volunteer subjects. The participants were asked to move a hand to press a corresponding control button as quickly as possible when an auditory or visual signal appeared randomly. The results showed that the total response time (TRT) to an auditory stimulus was faster than to a visual stimulus at simple reactions, while the opposite results were found at choice reactions. The TRT was faster at the horizontal button arrangement than the vertical one in the visual stimulus, while the opposite result was found in the auditory stimulus. The OER of auditory stimulus was higher than that of visual stimulus at both horizontal and vertical button arrangements.