| As technological products utilize sound alerts at higher rates, our ability to process alerts in natural environments is becoming more of a challenge. The purpose of this study was to examine the perception of common auditory appliance alerts in home settings when they are of low association (i.e., sound events that are not related with a specific meaning or purpose), high similarity (i.e., sound events that are alike), and high mapping (i.e., sound events that correspond to many items). Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, four key low association sounds, with higher or lower similarity and higher or lower mapping, were identified. The second experiment investigated the ability of participants to identify the source of each of these four sounds to pinpoint confusion levels. Results supported the hypothesis that low association sound alerts that are higher in similarity and mapping yield more confusion. Ultimately, this work can be applied to designing more effective alerts on everyday products. |
