(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1997-11)
Walker, Bruce N.; Ehrenstein, Addie
Since pitch is a commonly varied parameter in auditory displays, we investigated whether it is possible to attend to relative pitch while ignoring changes in pitch, and whether changes in pitch could be assessed independently of the overall pitch of a dynamic auditory stimulus. Stimuli were defined as either congruent (e.g., high pitch stimulus that became higher in pitch) or incongruent (e.g., high pitch stimulus that became lower in pitch). In this experiment, faster responses to congruent stimuli indicated a failure of selective attention. This effect was uniform for pitch judgments with all stimuli, but varied with the overall pitch for pitch-change judgments. The performance difference between congruent and incongruent trials was greatest for the extreme (high or low) stimuli. Moreover, pitch information intruded more into responses to pitch change than vice versa. Auditory display designers can use congruent stimuli to help distinguish between high and low pitches. If pitch change is the important dimension, designers should restrict the range over which stimulus pitches vary.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1996-11)
Walker, Bruce N.; Kramer, Gregory
Auditory displays are becoming increasingly common, but there are still no general guidelines for mapping data dimensions (e.g., temperature) onto display dimensions (e.g., pitch). This paper presents experimental research on different mappings and metaphors in a generic process-control task environment with reaction time and accuracy as dependent measures. It is hoped that this area of investigation will lead to the development of mapping guidelines applicable to auditory displays in a wide range of task domains. Some keywords in this paper include mapping, metaphor, and guidelines.