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

Jiaxu Zhou, Xiaohu Jia, Guoqiang Xu, Junhan Jia, Rihan Hai, Chongsen Gao and Shuo Zhang
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Jiaxu Zhou: Architecture College, Inner Mongolia University of Technology (IMUT), Hohhot 010051, China
Xiaohu Jia: Architecture College, Inner Mongolia University of Technology (IMUT), Hohhot 010051, China
Guoqiang Xu: Architecture College, Inner Mongolia University of Technology (IMUT), Hohhot 010051, China
Junhan Jia: Beijing Aidi School, Beijing 100000, China
Rihan Hai: Architecture College, Inner Mongolia University of Technology (IMUT), Hohhot 010051, China
Chongsen Gao: Architecture College, Inner Mongolia University of Technology (IMUT), Hohhot 010051, China
Shuo Zhang: UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, The Bartlett, University College London (UCL), London WC1H0NN, UK

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 24, 1-17

Abstract: Due to differences in cognitive ability and physiological development, the evacuation characteristics of children are different from those of adults. This study proposes a novel method of using wearable sensors to collect data (e.g., electrodermal activity, EDA; heart rate variability, HRV) on children’s physiological responses, and to continuously and quantitatively evaluate the effects of different types of alarm sounds during the evacuation of children. In order to determine the optimum alarm for children, an on-site experiment was conducted in a kindergarten to collect physiological data for responses to different types of alarm sounds during the evacuation of 42 children of different ages. The results showed that: (1) The alarm sounds led to changes in physiological indicators of children aged 3–6 years, and the effects of different types of alarm sounds on EDA and HRV activities were significantly different ( p < 0.05). Skin conductance (SC), skin conductance tonic (SCT) and skin conductance level (SCL) can be used as the main indicators for analysing EDA of children in this experiment ( p < 0.05), and the indicators of ultralow frequency (ULF) and very low frequency (VLF) for HRV were not affected by the type of alarm sounds ( p > 0.05). (2) Unlike adults, kindergarten children were more susceptible to the warning siren. The combined voice and warning alarm had optimal effects in stimulating children to perceive risk. (3) For children aged 3–6 years, gender had a significant impact on children’s reception to evacuation sound signals ( p < 0.05): Girls are more sensitive than boys in receiving evacuation sound signals, similar to findings of studies of risk perception of adult males and females. In addition, the higher the age, the greater the sensitivity to evacuation sound signals, which accords with results of previous studies on the evacuation dynamics of children.

Keywords: children safety; perceived risk; alarm sound; physiological monitoring; electrodermal activity; heart rate variability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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