ICAD

Perception


The conclusions of many auditory display demonstrations and experiments have included comments about the potential to apply theories and results from the fields of psychoacoustics and auditory perception to address problems of interaction and interference between display elements, and enhance the intuitive comprehension of sound based information representations.
The ICAD Perception Page presents auditory display work which explicitly incorporates perceptual principles, as well as links, pointers and references to other perceptually-based material which may prove helpful to those wishing to understand and learn more about how we hear the world around us.

Perception in Auditory Display

This page is for papers and web-pages specifically related to the application of perceptual principles to auditory display. Send contributions to the Webmasters.
A project to produce a rich auditory environment in which the behaviour of multiple independent activities is communicated through perceptually distinguishable streams.
The Creation, Presentation and Implications of Selected Auditory Illusions
The study of integral and seperable perceptual dimensions, and the use of multidimensional scaling are concepts developed in perceptual psychology. This page discusses these topics with a focus on auditory perception.
Multidimensional Scaling of Integral and Seperable Dimensions

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Auditory Demonstrations

Hearing is believing ! These demonstrations highlight a variety of perceptual phenomena by allowing you to actually hear them. They also include physiological, psychophysical and perceptually-based explanations.
The ASA Auditory Demonstrations audio CD and accompanying booklet has many classic demonstrations including critical bands, virtual pitch, dependence of pitch on intensity, Shephard's pitch paradox, Deutsch's binauaral illusion and more.
Bregman's Demonstrations of Auditory Scene Analysis audio CD and booklet of explanations keyed to the book, Auditory Scene Analysis (1990). It has 41 demonstrations of sequential integration. spectral integration, old-plus-new heuristic, and dichotic effects. To order, e-mail mitpress-orders@mit.edu and use Mastercard, Visa or American Express for payment. Please identify the CD with the following ISBN 0-262-522221-7 or BREIP.

Deutsch's Musical Illusions and Paradoxes is an audio CD of stereo illusions (the octave illusion and a variant, the scale illusion and several variants), a 'mysterious melody' and a full experiment (24 minutes) on the tritone paradox. It comes with a 32-page full-color booklet, which describes and illustrates the illusions in detail.

The ICAD'92 audio CD contains demonstrations of auralisation, earcons, auditory icons, parameter nesting and other techniques used in auditory displays. To obtain the CD and the accompanying ICAD'92 proceedings, call Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. (800/822-6339) and ask to order Gregory Kramer (editor) AUDITORY DISPLAY: SONIFICATION, AUDIFICATION AND AUDITORY INTERFACES (Hardbound ISBN 0-201-62603-9 $55.95, Paperbound ISBN 0-201-62604-7 $37.95).

Demonstrations of synthesised speech based on several models of speech perception
Speech Perception at Haskins

Psychoacoustic Research

The fields of psychoacoustics and perceptual psychology have a long history and the accumulated body of knowledge may serve to fill the need for theoretical foundations to underpin the practise of auditory display. Here are some helpful psychoacoustic research resources that auditory display designers may draw upon.
This Human Auditory Perception Frequently Asked Questions contains equations for Fletcher-Munson curves, band-rate, critical band-width, and a bibliography.
Psychoacoustic FAQ
The Journal of Acoustical Society of America (JASA) is the resting place of many valuable psychoacoustic experimental observations and results.
ASA Home Page
The specific goals of MuSICA are to: (a) maintain a comprehensive and continually updated computer-based record of scientific research on music and its biological substrates, (b) to make this information available at no cost to promote research and cooperative efforts and (c) to increase general awareness and knowledge of the results of music research.
MuSICA Project
The MIT Machine Listening Lab distributes data which can be used for 3D spatialisation of sounds.
Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTF) of a KEMAR dummy head microphone

Computational Models of Hearing

This is the inverse of auditory display - getting a computer to "hear" an auditory scene like a human would, rather than getting a computer to generate a scene for a human to hear. The common ground is human auditory perception. These computational models are implementations of theories about aspects of auditory perception, and the theory is well described in each case. Perhaps in the future some such model could be used as a standard for comparing the effectiveness of auditory displays for particular tasks.

The Auditory List is a forum for researchers working on computational models of hearing Auditory list home page

The recognition of speech in complex auditory scenes consisting of multiple speakers and transient noises is a difficult problem which is being addressed through computational models of auditory processing and organisation at Sheffield Uni. This site includes the ShATR multi-simultaneous-speaker corpus.
Speech and Hearing Group at Sheffield University

Higher level focus on interpretation of information recieved through sound, for example for use in robotic audition.
IPUS Knowledge-Based Signal Processing

Miscellaneous Leads

A transcript of an interview with a painter and writer who suddenly became blind twenty years ago. He now spends much of his time travelling the world, "seeing it", as you'll hear, with amazing perception and vision.
ABC Radio National interview with Hugue de Montalembert

The representation of data requires consideration of an appropriate match between perceptual characteristics of the representation, and data characteristics of the information to be represented. These issues have been discussed by researchers in graphic visualisation using colour, shape etc., and are the subject of this WWW discussion page.
Data Visualization Discussion Group


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