The Duration of an Auditory Icon Can Affect How the Listener Interprets Its Meaning

Initially introduced in the field of informatics, an auditory icon consists of a short sound that is present in everyday life, used to represent a specific event, object, function, or action. Auditory icons have been studied in various fields, and overall, compared to other types of auditory alarms, they can be very efficient in informing the listener about a situation or event. So far, auditory icons have been used with a wide range of durations, ranging from a few hundreds of milliseconds up to several seconds. Still little is known, however, about whether and how icon duration influences its interpretation. In the present study, we therefore asked listeners to rate 12 auditory icons, divided into four different sound categories (nonverbal human sounds, machine sounds, human activities, and animal vocalizations), in five different durations (200, 400, 800, 1,600, and 3,200 ms). They rated (1) how appropriately the icon sound itself represented the icon's referent and (2) how appropriately each duration of the icon sound represented the icon's referent. Overall, results demonstrate that the duration of the auditory icons in this stimulus set can directly affect how the icon represents the referent. Auditory icons in the test set characterized by human activities represented their referent most appropriately in a relatively shorter duration (400 or 800 ms). The majority of the auditory icons in the set consisting of machine sounds, nonverbal human sounds, and animal vocalizations, however, were considered as more appropriately representing their referent in longer durations (800 ms and 1,600 ms). Further systematic research is necessary to determine whether the duration effects shown here may generalize to other stimulus sets.