Older adults' perception of urgency: Effects of simple temporal patterns in auditory signals

This study explored the impact of simple alternating on/off temporal sound patterns on urgency perception in older and young groups, with varying pulse rates and duty cycles. Urgency judgments and reaction times were collected across age groups. Under equal sound pressure level conditions, older adults tended to perceive sounds with lower pulse rates (around 8.84 Hz) as most urgent, while young participants showed peak urgency at higher pulse rates (around 25.0 Hz). Sounds with a 50% duty cycle were generally rated as more urgent, particularly among older adults. After loudness equalization, although temporal features such as pulse rate and duty cycle continued to influence urgency preferences, the previously observed U-shaped trends were attenuated, especially in older adults, suggesting that loudness perception may mediate age-related differences in temporal cue processing. These findings highlight perceptual differences in urgency across age groups and underscore the importance of considering both temporal and loudness cues when designing auditory alerts for older populations.