Implementing voice and datalink commands under task interference during simulated flight

Datalink is a text-based system with potential to address some of the problems associated with voice communications. Given the two communication technologies, the differences between processing speech and text are of concern. Moreover, the susceptibility of either format to interference during command processing is of primary interest. Participants responded to speech and text commands by setting controls during simulated flight while performing verbal, visual, and central executive interference tasks. The results demonstrate that longer message sets produce poorer performance and that performance suffers more under verbal and CE interference. These findings were obtained in the absence of a presentation format effect suggesting that both speech and text messages utilize an underlying verbal code and are therefore more susceptible to verbal interference. However, when control setting errors were made, more performance decrements were observed in the text condition during the presentation of both CE and visual interference.