Thirteen Years of Reflection on Auditory Graphing: Promises, Pitfalls, and Potential New Directions

While developments in sound production hardware now make the creation of auditory graphs possible for casual users of personal computers, some of the same pitfalls to effective auditory display development that arose in the early 1990’s continue to impede effective applications of this promising technology. Most of these pitfalls stem from lack of adequate understanding about key properties of auditory perception and attention and from inappropriate generalizations of existing data visualization practices. At the same time, however, we now know about some strategies that appear to work and offer promise for making sonification a useful and accepted tool for data exploration and decision making. The present paper summarizes several selected examples in each of these categories, along some suggestions for future research directions

An Investigation of the Cognitive and Perceptual Dynamics of a Color–Digit Synesthete

L, a 47-year-old female of Choctaw descent, was first identified as a potential synesthete on the basis of self-report data regarding digit–color associations. Upon completion of the identification procedures typified in the literature, it was concluded that L met the classic memory-performance criteria used to identify synesthetic ability. A series of Stroop-type tasks were then performed to identify the dynamics of her synesthetic experiences. The results of these analyses provided three findings of note. First, the clear pattern of response-time differences between L and the control group suggests that tasks designed to produce involuntary divisions of attention can be an effective means by which to demonstrate that synesthetic experiences are involuntary but elicited. Second, the significantly slower performance by L on a negative-priming Stroop list shaped around her color–digit associations indicates the presence of a lexical component in her synesthetic experience. Third, the use of a manual color-classification task for which a verbal response was not employed served to confirm the presence of a lexical component in L’s synesthetic experiences. The implications of these results for current synesthetic theories are then discussed. Finally, a clustering solution of a portion of L’s color–digit experiences is presented, along with the ramifications of its results on the nature of L’s perceptual experience

Response and encoding factors in ignoring irrelevant information

Subjects classified either the numerosity or numeric value of elements in successive stimulus displays. In separate experiments, responses were indicated by oral naming, card sorting, manual tapping, and oral tapping. Incongruent levels of numeric value slowed naming and sorting, but not tapping, when numerosity was the cue for responding. Incongruent numerosity slowed tapping, but not naming and sorting, when numeric value was the cue. Changes in stimulus response mapping may thus critically alter the ability to ignore an irrelevant stimulus dimension

Data Sonification from the Desktop: Should Sound Be Part of Standard Data Analysis Software?

The design of auditory formats for data display is presently focused on applications for blind or visually impaired users, specialized displays for use when visual attention must be devoted to other tasks, and some innovative work in revealing properties of complex data that may not be effectively rendered by traditional visual means. With the availability of high-quality and flexible sound production hardware in standard desktop computers, the potential exists for using sound to represent characteristics of typical “small and simple” samples of data in routine data inspection and analysis. Our research has shown that basic properties of simple functions, distribution properties of data samples, and patterns of covariation between two variables can be effectively displayed by simple auditory graphs involving patterns of pitch variation over time. While such developments have implications for specialized applications and populations of users, these displays are easily comprehended by normal users with minimal practice. Providing further software enhancement to encourage exploration of data representation by sound may lead to a variety of useful creative developments in data display technology

Response and encoding factors in ignoring irrelevant information

Subjects classified either the numerosity or numeric value of elements in successive stimulus displays. In separate experiments, responses were indicated by oral naming, card sorting, manual tapping, and oral tapping. Incongruent levels of numeric value slowed naming and sorting, but not tapping, when numerosity was the cue for responding. Incongruent numerosity slowed tapping, but not naming and sorting, when numeric value was the cue. Changes in stimulus response mapping may thus critically alter the ability to ignore an irrelevant stimulus dimension

Dynamic behavior of a magnetic bearing supported jet engine rotor with auxiliary bearings

This paper presents a study of the dynamic behavior of a rotor system supported by auxiliary bearings. The steady-state behavior of a simulation model based upon a production jet engine is explored over a wide range of operating conditions for varying rotor imbalance, support stiffness and damping. Interesting dynamical phenomena, such as chaos, subharmonic responses, and double-valued responses, are presented and discussed