Pitch and pitch change interact in auditory displays

Designing auditory displays requires understanding how different attributes of sound are processed. Operators must often listen to a particular stimulus dimension and make control actions contingent on the auditory information. Three experiments used a selective-listening paradigm to examine interactions between auditory dimensions. Participants were instructed to attend to either relative pitch or direction of pitch change of dynamic stimuli. With vertically arranged keypress responses, reactions to both dimensions showed stimulus-response compatibility effects, indicating that pitch is treated spatially. Direction of pitch change affected responses to pitch; level of pitch more strongly affected responses to pitch change. To reduce deleterious effects of irrelevant pitch information, auditory display designers can restrict the pitch range used to display dynamic data.