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Sound Research WIKINDX

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Blattner, M. M., Sumikawa, D. A., & Greenberg, R. M. (1989). Earcons and icons: Their structure and common design principles. Human-computer Interaction, 4, 11–44.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 18/01/2016, 15:54
Earcons are "nonverbal audio messages used in the user-computer interface to provide information to the user about some computer object, operation, or interaction."
A personal communication from Buxton indicates that in video arcades "scores drop when sound accompanying video games is turned off."
Paraphrasing Kerman: "Even though timbre is difficult to describe and notate precisely, it is one of the most immediate and easily recognizable characteristics of sound."* * Kerman, J. (1980). Listen. New York: Worth.
Three classes of earcons: representational semi-abstract abstract with grey areas inbetween.
Gaver, W. W. (1986). Auditory icons: Using sound in computer interfaces. Human-computer Interaction, 2, 167–177.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 08/01/2008, 07:51
"...Wagner's "Leitmotifs" and the use of sound in video games such as Pac Man, use metaphors based on similarities between the temporal progressions of the sounds and the events they are to represent. Other examples, such as the use of changing pitch to stand for changing heights, involve the use of a dimensional metaphor, in which one ordered dimension is used to represent another."
Manipulating parameters of the sound itself such as pitch and loudness (what are termed proximal stimuli), forces mappings between data and representation "to be either arbitrary or, at best, metaphorical. A nomic mapping can only be produced by manipulating the sound in terms of its source -- by using natural sounds." Although such sounds may of course be symbolic or metaphorical, "natural sounds should make possible a higher degree of articulatory directness than manipulating dimensions of the sound itself."
"an auditory icon is a sound that provides information about an event that represents desired data. Instead of using dimensions of sound to stand for dimensions of the data, dimensions of the sound's source are used"
"Auditory icons provide a natural and intuitive way to represent dimensional data and to represent conceptual objects in a computer system."
Metonymic auditory icons are those "in which a feature is used to represent the whole"
Gaver identifies three mappings between data and its representation which he applies to sound: symbolic -- arbitrary mapping Metaphoric -- similarities between data and representation which may be structure-mapped (structural similarities) or metonymic. Nomic -- direct relationship between representation of the sound source and sound. Gavin terms these types of sound auditory icons.
Discusses the notion of articulatory directness which is the continuum on which symbolic (least), metaphoric and nomic (most) stand.
Having suggested that nomic sounds have greater articulatory directness than symbolic, Gavin warns that culturally-ingrained symbolic sounds are just as powerfully representative and should not be discarded as useless.
Keller, P., & Stevens, C. (2004). Meaning from environmental sounds: Types of signal-referent relations and their effect on recognizing auditory icons. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 10(1), 3–12.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 14/10/2008, 00:11
The authors adapt a taxonomy of visual icon signal-referents from Familant (1993) & Detweiler for use with auditory icons. A direct reference "indicates a signal referent relation in which there is only one referent involved, the denotative referent (e.g., machine gun fire sound for firing machine gun) ... Indirect reference occurs when there are at least two referents. Typically the signal refers to the denotative referent through an intermediate sign referent ... An example from the auditory domain would be use of the sound of rattling trash cans--the sign referent--to signal that a computer file has been successfully deleted--the denotative referent."
Experimental results showed "that there is no significant difference in recognition accuracy or speed of response to ecological versus metaphorical relations."
The "predisposition to find meaning effectively widens the potential database of sounds that can be used as auditory warnings."
The results of their experiments indicate that auditory icons "may outperform abstract sounds such as earcons" in contrast to Blattner et. al.'.'s assertions (Blattner, Sumikawa, & Greenberg 1989). s assertions (Blattner, Sumikawa, & Greenberg 1989).