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The Relationship between Different Types of Alarm Sounds and Children's Perceived Risk Based on Their Physiological

Jiaxu Zhou1, Xiaohu Jia1,2,3, Guoqiang Xu1,2,3

  • 1Architecture College, Inner Mongolia University of Technology (IMUT), Hohhot 010051, China.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
|December 19, 2019
PubMed

Insights

Children

Area of Science:

  • Child safety and emergency preparedness
  • Human-computer interaction
  • Biomedical engineering

Background:

  • Children's evacuation behaviors differ from adults due to developmental variations.
  • Existing evacuation alarm research primarily focuses on adults, neglecting children's unique physiological responses.
  • Wearable sensors offer a novel approach to quantitatively assess children's real-time physiological reactions during emergencies.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To develop and validate a method using wearable sensors to measure children's physiological responses (electrodermal activity, EDA; heart rate variability, HRV) to different evacuation alarm sounds.
  • To identify the optimal alarm sound for enhancing children's risk perception and evacuation efficiency.
  • To investigate the influence of age and gender on children's physiological responses to auditory evacuation signals.

Main Methods:

  • On-site experiment conducted in a kindergarten involving 42 children aged 3-6 years.
  • Collection of physiological data, including electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate variability (HRV), using wearable sensors.
  • Analysis of physiological responses to various alarm sound types, including warning sirens, voice alarms, and combined alarms.

Main Results:

  • Alarm sounds significantly altered children's EDA and HRV (p < 0.05), with specific EDA indicators (SC, SCT, SCL) proving most effective.
  • Kindergarten children showed heightened susceptibility to warning sirens compared to adults; combined voice and warning alarms were most effective in risk perception.
  • Girls and older children (3-6 years) exhibited greater sensitivity to evacuation sound signals, aligning with previous research on gender and age-related risk perception.

Conclusions:

  • Wearable sensors provide a viable method for quantitatively assessing children's physiological responses to evacuation alarms.
  • A combined voice and warning alarm is recommended for optimizing children's evacuation perception and response.
  • Findings underscore the importance of age and gender-specific considerations in designing effective auditory evacuation signals for children.

Keywords:
alarm soundchildren safetyelectrodermal activityheart rate variabilityperceived riskphysiological monitoring

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