Knowing what's coming: Anticipatory audio cues can mitigate motion sickness

Ouren X. Kuiper, Jelte E. Bos*, Cyriel Diels, Eike A. Schmidt

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

Being able to anticipate upcoming motion is known to potentially mitigate sickness resulting from provocative motion. We investigated whether auditory cues could increase anticipation and subsequently reduce motion sickness. Participants (N = 20) were exposed on a sled on a rail track to two 15-min conditions. Both were identical in terms of motion, being composed of the same repeated 9 m fore-aft displacements, with a semi-random timing of pauses and direction. The auditory cues were either 1) informative on the timing and direction of the upcoming motion, or 2) non-informative. Illness ratings were recorded at 1-min intervals using a 11-point scale. After exposure, average illness ratings were significantly lower for the condition that contained informative auditory cues, as compared to the condition without informative cues. This knowledge, i.e. that auditory signals can improve anticipation to motion, could be of importance in reducing carsickness in domains such as that of autonomous vehicles.

Original languageEnglish
Article number103068
Pages (from-to)1-6
Number of pages6
JournalApplied Ergonomics
Volume85
Early online date6 Feb 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2020

Keywords

  • Anticipation
  • Autonomous driving
  • Carsickness
  • Countermeasures
  • Motion sickness
  • Multisensory integration
  • Unpredictable motion

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