Preliminary results from collaborative referring to impulsive sonar sounds

Abstract

A recent experiment is described wherein pairs of listeners (a "director" and a "matcher") collaboratively refer to eight-element sets of impulsive sonar sounds, which are the same, but ordered differently for each listener. The sounds in a given set are privately displayed on each listener's computer as a line of blank cards that play a corresponding sound when clicked and can be rearranged from left to right. The listeners' task is to move the matcher's sounds into the same order as the director's. Through conversation, the listeners work out how to verbally characterize the sounds and develop a shared vocabulary. This vocabulary is presented for selected participants and is shown to generally consist of names, actions, and properties of familiar, everyday auditory events. In general, these references function as classes and descriptors. Classes correspond to causal categories that are aurally analogous to (i.e., homophonic with) the acoustic origins of the impulsive sonar sounds. Similarly, descriptors, distinguish between the properties of signal processing features that are appropriate to impulsive sounds within a given category. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.