Evaluation of Psychoacoustic Sound Parameters for Sonification

Ferguson, J. and Brewster, S. A. (2017) Evaluation of Psychoacoustic Sound Parameters for Sonification. In: 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2017), Glasgow, Scotland, 13-17 Nov 2017, pp. 120-127. ISBN 9781450355438 (doi: 10.1145/3136755.3136783)

Abstract

Sonification designers have little theory or experimental evidence to guide the design of data-to-sound mappings. Many mappings use acoustic representations of data values which do not correspond with the listener's perception of how that data value should sound during sonification. This research evaluates data-to-sound mappings that are based on psychoacoustic sensations, in an attempt to move towards using data-to-sound mappings that are aligned with the listener's perception of the data value's auditory connotations. Multiple psychoacoustic parameters were evaluated over two experiments, which were designed in the context of a domain-specific problem - detecting the level of focus of an astronomical image through auditory display. Recommendations for designing sonification systems with psychoacoustic sound parameters are presented based on our results.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Ferguson, Jamie and Brewster, Professor Stephen
• Authors: Ferguson, J., and Brewster, S. A.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Journal Name: Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction - ICMI 2017
• Publisher: ACM Press
• ISBN: 9781450355438
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2017 The Authors
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher