Volume 11 • Issue 1 • PP: 20–28 • 2026
Cross-Modal Memory Support in Visually Demanding Environments: A Controlled Study of Haptic Pulses and Spatial Audio Cues for Reducing Prospective Memory Failures During Multitasking
View PDF Abstract
When people are immersed in a visually demanding task, the attentional resources required to monitor the environment for cues that should trigger a remembered intention are frequently captured by the primary task, causing prospective memory failures that range from the inconvenient to the safety-critical. This problem is pervasive in modern work environments in which digital interfaces compete continuously for visual attention, yet the overwhelming majority of reminder and notification systems rely on the same visual channel that is already congested. This paper reports a controlled user study examining whether carefully designed haptic and spatial audio cues can compensate for this visual saturation and restore prospective memory performance without substantially increasing cognitive burden. Thirty-two participants completed a counterbalanced within-subjects protocol in which they performed primary cognitive tasks—document editing on a virtual desktop and navigating in a driving simulation—while managing a set of time-critical intentions delivered through four reminder conditions: visual-only, haptic-only, spatial audio only, and the combined haptic-plus-audio channel. The study measures prospective memory hit rate, task-switching errors, cue response latency, and multidimensional subjective workload across both scenarios and all four conditions. Results consistently favour the combined modality, which produces substantially fewer memory failures and lower reported workload than any single channel, while individual differences in baseline workload predict the magnitude of benefit from non-visual cueing. These findings carry direct implications for the design of ambient notification systems in high-demand professional and safety-critical environments.
Keywords
References
[1] G. O. Einstein and M. A. McDaniel, “Normal aging and prospective memory,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 717–726, 1990, doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.16.4.717.
[2] R. K. Dismukes, “Prospective memory in workplace and everyday situations,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 215–220, 2012, doi: 10.1177/0963721412449596.
[3] P. Hirsch, L. Moretti, B. Leichtmann, I. Koch, and V. Nitsch, “Opportune moments for task interruptions: examining the cognitive mechanisms underlying interruption-timing effects,” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 15, p. 1465323, 2025, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg. 2024.1465323.
[4] C. L. Asplund, T. Obana, P. Bhatnagar, X. Q. Koh, and S. T. Perrault, “It’s all in the timing: Principles of transient distraction illustrated with vibrotactile tasks,” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 17:1–17:29, 2020, doi: 10.1145/3386358.
[5] G. Cantarella, S. Mastroberardino, P. Bisiacchi, and E. Macaluso, “Prospective memory: the combined impact of cognitive load and task focality,” Brain Structure and Function, vol. 228, pp. 1801–1815, 2023, doi: 10.1007/s00429-023-02658-3.
[6] B. Meier and T. D. Zimmermann, “Loads and loads and loads: the influence of prospective load, retrospective load, and ongoing task load in prospective memory,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 9, p. 322, 2015, doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00322.
[7] CHI 2023 Haptic Experience Authors, “Factors of haptic experience across multiple haptic modalities,” in Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ser. CHI ’23. ACM, 2023, doi: 10.1145/3544548.3581514.
[8] H.-S. Moon, J. Baek, and J. Seo, “Effect of redundant haptic information on task performance during visuo-tactile task interruption and recovery,” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 7, p. 1924, 2016, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg. 2016.01924.
[9] S. G. Hart and L. E. Staveland, “Development of NASATLX (Task Load Index): Results of empirical and theoretical research,” Advances in Psychology, vol. 52, pp. 139–183, 1988, doi: 10.1016/S0166-4115(08)62386-9.
[10] L. Longo, C. D. Wickens, G. M. Hancock, and P. A. Hancock, “Human mental workload: A survey and a novel inclusive definition,” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, p. 883321, 2022, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg. 2022.883321.
[11] C. D. Wickens, “Multiple resources and mental workload,” Human Factors, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 449–455, 2008, doi: 10.1518/001872008X288394.
Cite This Article
Choose your preferred format