Effects of Context on the Identification of Everyday Sounds

• Published in: Human performance 1991-09, Vol.4 (3), p.199-219
• Main Authors: Ballas, James A., Mullins, Timothy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0895-9285; 1532-7043
• DOI: 10.1207/s15327043hup0403_3

The effects of context on the identification of everyday sounds was examined in four experiments. In all experiments, the test sounds were selected as nearly homonymous pairs. That is, the members of a pair sounded similar but were aurally discriminable. These test sounds were presented in isolation to get baseline identification performance and within sequences of other everyday sounds to assess contextual effects. These sequences were: (a) semantically consistent with the correct response, (b) semantically biased toward the other member of the pair, or (c) composed of randomly arranged sounds. TWO par- adigms, binary choice and free identification were used. Results indicate that context had significant negative effects and only minor positive effects. Per- formance was consistently poorest in biased context and best in both isolated and consistent context. A signal detection analysis indicated that perform- ance in identifying an out-of-context sound remains constant for the two par- adigms, and that response bias is conservative, especially with a free-response paradigm. Labels added to enhance context generally had little effect beyond the effects of sounds alone.