Effectiveness of Speech Response under Dual-Task Situations

The effectiveness of speech response under a dual-task situation in which participants entered 10 alphabetic strings while concurrently manipulating a robot was examined by an experimental design using response mode as a between-subject factor. The effect of the number of inputs in robot manipulation on dual-task efficiency was also investigated in order to discuss whether the performance benefits for the speech response are enhanced by increasing workload (number of inputs). A total of 12 male participants manipulated a robot using a speech input device. A second group of 12 male participants performed the task using a keyboard. The dual-task efficiency entry time of the speech response was better than that of the manual response. The dual-task percentage correct of the speech response was higher than that of the manual response. Increasing the workload (number of inputs required for robot manipulation) made these tendencies more noticeable. It was clarified that the manual input in the secondary robot manipulation task resulted in output competition between the two discrete tasks that disrupted the dual-task efficiency of the primary entry task. In conclusion, some dual-task benefits were found for the speech input method especially when the number of inputs increased.