Most building fire alarms are presented auditorily and almost all are simple non-verbal sounds, such asbells and buzzers—despite the availability of inexpensive, feasible, voice-presentation technology. Oneadvantage of speech or vocal signals is that they can convey specific avoidance instructions. This studyexamined the content (wording) of spoken fire alarms. Sixty-five participants rated 90 spoken fireevacuation warnings plus two non-speech sounds (white noise and a recording of an actual [simple,nonverbal] fire alarm) on a 9-point scale (0=not at all, 8=extremely) on their acceptability as a building firealarm. Significantly higher ratings were assigned to spoken than to non-spoken warnings, except therecorded fire alarm had significantly higher ratings compared to the shortest speech warning (“Fire, Fire”).Speech warnings that provided evacuation instructions (e.g., “Use Stairs”) and communicated the need toevacuate right away (e.g., “Exit Now”) were rated significantly higher than those lacking that information.Implications of these results are discussed.
展开▼
