Fast & Scrupulous: Gesture-Based Alarms Improve Performances Under Several Mental Workloads. An ERSP Study

In high-risk environments, fast and accurate responses to warning systems are essential to efficiently handle emergency situations and prevent potential catastrophic events. The aim of the present experiment was twofold: 1) investigating whether hand action videos, referred as to gesture alarms, are more efficient to trigger fast and accurate responses than text alarm messages (referred as written alarms), especially when the mental workload is high; and 2) investigating the brain activity in response to both types of alarms as a function of the level of mental workload. Regardless the level of mental workload, participants were found to be both faster and more accurate when responding to the gesture alarms than to the written alarms. Brain electrophysiological results suggest that this greater efficiency might be due to the fact that (compared to written alarms) gesture alarms facilitate the action execution reflected by the mu and beta power decrease observed around the response time window. Taken together, these results demonstrate that gesture alarm systems may help improving operators’ performances in emergency situations.