An auditory monitoring task has been developed for use in shipboard environments as a measure of task performance under difficult environmental conditions such as severe ship motion. The task involves listening to sequences of apparently random presentations of either three or four tones. The listener must monitor the number of occurences of either two or three specified tones from the set. When the specified number have occurred, a button is pressed, and the count restarted. With reasonable training, stable performance in the laboratory can be obtained for at least thirty minutes of monitoring. A wide range of tone presentation rates were used, as were different ratios of tones monitored to tones presented. The results demonstrated that both presentation rate and tones monitored to tones presented could be used to control task difficulty. A consistent and significant difference in performance was found between men (N = 10) and women (N = 8). The literature on sex differences describes such differences in performance on auditory tasks, but does not provide an adequate explanation. The space/power requirements and other support needed to implement the test are minimal, making it adaptable to many difficult situations.
