Data Sonification

Turnage, Bonebright, Buhman, Flowers (1996) showed that untrained participants can listen to shapes. That is, they used data sonification – musical representation of two dimensional space, with pitch as the vertical dimension and time as the horizontal dimension – to present participants the visual and auditory representation of waveforms. In two conditions, they showed the participants could match one visual presentation to one of two auditory representations, or match one auditory presentation to one of two visual presentations. Although Turnage et al. (1996) showed performance was not perfect, we wondered whether the next logical step might be explored. That is, could we present fully two-dimensional shapes, such as the borders of U.S. states, and have people match the visual and auditory representations. Before we explore these possibilities however, it will be beneficial to further evaluate what data sonification is as well as some background on the subject. Simply put, data sonification is the conveyance of data through the use of sound (Kaper, H., Wiebel, E., & Tipei, S., 1999). One way that the data can be portrayed in this way is by changing the pitch of the sound. Additionally, changing the temporality of the sound can also change how the data is portrayed.
One of these is that it opens up increased possibilities for the interpretation of data. For instance, although vision is dominant in certain domains such as spatial orientation, audition is dominant in other areas like temporal factors (Guttman, S. E., Gilroy, L. A., & Blake, R., 2005). This highlights the fact that auditory stimuli can potentially be used to deliver data in ways that are more effectively processed. Furthermore, it displays the fact that there may be alternative ways that auditory information can be processed. For instance, in some situations auditory data may be more effectively processed than visual