Cross-Modal Assessment of Perceptual Strength of Communication Signals Presented in Auditory and Tactile Modalities

In our previous work we have compared the use of stylus movements augmented with directionalpredictive signals (DPS) such as sounds, vibrations and electro-tactile signals which were used as the candidates to guide the user exploration behavior during blind inspection of the graphical data. The electro-tactile DPS were the most beneficial for this purpose and required less cognitive efforts to interpret their encoded meaning. In this paper we present the technique for assessing and aligning the perceptual strength of the communication signals of different modalities as the candidates to encode the different kinds of graphical information. In particular, three types of DPS were assessed in terms of the variation in visual-motor reaction times which were elicited by the subjects when the test signals were exposed in combination with referent visual stimuli. The experimental findings confirmed that the electro-tactile patterns possess the stronger perceptual attributes in comparison with auditory and vibration signals.