What’s more, wearable technology and health monitoring apps are improving so rapidly that they might be able to help us choose the exact best alarm for us. Given we now know that different alarm sound types can influence how humans wake in normal, residential and emergency scenarios, it is interesting to consider the possibilities presented by modern technology.ĭigital audio is now readily accessible and easy to share, meaning that when we go to bed we can set ourselves an alarm consisting of almost any conceivable sound. In an emergency, lower-pitched sounds might actually be more useful than traditional high-pitched alarms. For example, it has been shown that music does activate certain areas of the brain that control attention, although the exact mechanisms of this effect are still being investigated. Why are these lower-pitched sounds more effective? It might be because there are crucial frequency bandwidths and how sound is processed by the inner ear and then the brain. With the right type of alarm, children demonstrated better response time and memory of events, which is likely to be important in following instructions or action plans in an emergency such as a fire. When children awaken in emergency conditions, a low-pitched alarm or even the sound of a human voice seem to be much more effective than conventional higher-frequency alarms at combating the effects of sleep inertia. This revealed that in emergency scenarios, children are also receptive to how alarm sound design affects their waking state. To look at these cases, we reviewed all the available research on both sound alarm design and awakening in different age groups. Some people, such as members of the military or emergency services, have to wake promptly and immediately respond to urgent situations. Sometimes we have to wake up quickly, perhaps to a smoke alarm, for instance. We don’t always awaken to a preset alarm. Morning haze: why it's time to stop hitting the snooze buttonĭo other alarm sounds influence how well we wake up? Melodic alarm sounds resulted in participants having faster and more accurate responses, compared with a control group who woke up using classic alarm sounds without melody. Similar to the test performed by astronauts on the International Space Station to monitor changes in sustained attention, our participants were required to touch their mobile phone screen as quickly as possible when the colour of a shape changed. We used a custom-designed app to allow participants to wake in their own bed to different alarm sounds on their smart-phone, then immediately perform a game-like task to assess their state of alertness. To study this intriguing effect in more depth, we carried out a second study to evaluate the effect of wake-up music on factors such as mental alertness. Relative frequency of alarm sound type and perceived sleep inertia.
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