Exploring Sketch-based Sound Associations for Sonification

The interpretation of sounds can lead to different associations and mental models based on the person's prior knowledge and experiences. Thus, cross-modal mappings such as verbalization or visualization of sounds can vary from person to person. The sonification provides complements to visualization techniques or possible alternatives to more effectively support the interpretation of abstract data. Since sonifications usually map data attributes directly to auditory parameters, this may conflict with users' mental models.

In this paper, we analyze various sketch-based associations of sounds to better understand users' mental models in order to derive understandable cross-modal correlations for sonification. Based on the analysis of different sketches from a previously conducted user study, we propose three semantic-auditory channels that can be used to encode abstract data.