Gregory Kramer

Pitch and Loudness Interact in Auditory Displays: Can the Data Get Lost in the Map?

Many auditory displays use acoustic attributes such as frequency, intensity, and spectral content to represent different characteristics of multidimensional data. This study demonstrated a perceptual interaction between dynamic changes in pitch and loudness, as well as perceived asymmetries in directional acoustic change, that distorted the data relations represented in an auditory display. Three experiments showed that changes in loudness can influence pitch change, that changes in pitch can influence loudness change, and that increases in acoustic intensity are judged to change more than equivalent decreases. Within a sonification of stock market data, these characteristics created perceptual distortions in the data set. The results suggest that great care should be exercised when using lower level acoustic dimensions to represent multidimensional data.

Sound science: Marking ten international conferences on auditory display

This special issue of ACM Transactions on Applied Perception is intended to commemorate the tenth International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) and to serve as an introduction and overview of the field of auditory displays. This paper discusses the goals of the issue and describes the paper selection process. The selected papers are also introduced, with their connections to each other, their place in ICAD, and their relevance to other fields briefly highlighted.

Sonification design and metaphors: Comments on Walker and Kramer, ICAD 1996

The original Walker and Kramer paper at ICAD 1996 studied the mapping of data dimensions (e.g., temperature) onto sound dimensions (e.g., pitch). In this commentary we consider the historical and methodological context of that early work, discuss its relevance to the field of auditory display, and point out how it forms part of a body of work with ties to other researchers in the ICAD community.