Categories of Auditory Perception and Non-Speech Sound at the Interface

Presented below is an attempt to uncover the categorization of auditory events employed by humans. it proceeds from the fact that only certain types of auditory events attract attention of human listeners in a given context, and hypothesizes that the degree of distraction caused by an event corresponds to its place in the grid of perceptual categories defined by six non-accidental features. The author then makes some conclusions about the use of non-speech audio at the interface for output, advocating the inclusion of everyday sounds into interaction scenarios, all too often limited to speech and music, the argument being that natural contexts provide higher range of cognitive affordances.