127 6–10 july, 2013, Łódź, Poland international Conference on auditory Display ICaD 2013 Much of the cognitive research that is referenced in the field has been borrowed from similar and related, fields. With such a framework in place some of the obstacles specific to auditory display may be approached. Some of these problems, such as the need for more aesthetically pleasing and meaningful displays, are a constant concern driving research and development efforts within the field. The development and exploration of model based sonifications is a contemporary concern, as is the development of more intuitive earcons that do not rely so heavily on previous learning; the extensions of auditory icons to emerging interactive mobile technologies, and the prevention of entanglement between factors of auditory perception and data-relations in parameter sonification. In order to advance the field, it is necessary to undertake a more rigorous examination of how people interact with auditory display systems. 2. THE ECOLOGICAL APPROACH J.J. Gibson pioneered the ecological approach to perception. This states that an organism’s actions are constrained by the affordances granted by its environment. In auditory display, this necessitates the design of environments (display) that offers certain affordances to the user. This has been a useful approach and thinking of this sort has underpinned much of the development in the field [4],[5] [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. It is here argued that the ecological approach answers half of the question of how to design meaningful and salient auditory displays. It takes as its point of departure the notion of naïve realism, that the senses offer us a direct awareness of the exterior world. This assumption does not account for the nature of human embodiment. For auditory displays to take that leap forward into the realm of everyday usefulness, it must be accepted that the environment from which affordances arise is organized by our cognitive capacities. Taking into account Varela’s [11] notion of enaction, i.e. cognition as the process of guided action, the concept that an environment is shaped by both the physical world and the biological systems of the organism emerges. This paints a picture of an environment that is both a product of cognitive capacities, and of physical matter. In extending the notion of an embodied sound environment to the auditory display user, a wider range of affordances (based on the embodied, as well as the physical, nature of their environment) is offered. This permits a consideration of certain cognitive capacities, which will be discussed later, as channels across which affordances that are rooted in our meaning- making capacities can be offered. The affordances offered by EMBODIED COGNITION IN AUDITORY DISPLAY Stephen Roddy Dept. of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Printing House, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Rep. of Ireland roddyst@tcd.ie Dermot Furlong Music & Media Technologies, Dept. of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Printing House, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Rep. of Ireland dfurlong@tcd.ie ABSTRACT This paper makes a case for the use of an embodied cognition framework, based on embodied schemata and cross-domain mappings, in the design of auditory display. An overview of research that relates auditory display with embodied cognition is provided to support such a framework. It then describes research efforts towards the development this framework. By designing to support human cognitive competencies that are bound up with meaning making, it is hoped to open the door to the creation of more meaningful and intuitive auditory displays. 1. CONTEXT Auditory display is a relatively new inter-disciplinary field that, although having made some very serious advances since its inception, still remains a far cry from the status of its visual counterparts. In its current state it exists against a backdrop of open questions and problems. The biggest question is why its development has stalled and how can it be promoted in a way that presents auditory display as a useful contemporary method for the rendering of data to cognition. In answering that question it has been proposed that there is a need for an overall theoretical framework for auditory display in which to position research and development efforts. The need for this framework is brought up by Walker and Nees [1] who suggest that a deeper understanding of human interaction with auditory display is also needed. This second point is especially interesting to the authors, and it is stated once again by Neuhoff and Heller [2] who go one step further and call for the development of auditory display based on intuitive mental models. Their idea is to design for pre-existing cognitive competencies. This sentiment is repeatedly reflected across the literature. There seems to be an emerging sense that the development of an overall theory of auditory display will have to give serious attention to cognitive factors. Gossman [3] makes a similar call, but with a specific slant towards embodied cognition, and Walker and Kramer [4] isolate cognitive processing as a key component for consideration in sonification. Auditory display exists at the intersection between a myriad of other disciplines such as auditory research, human computer interaction, music technology and cognitive science. The task of establishing auditory display as an independent field in its own right requires a grounding theoretical framework. In order to do this, it is necessary to get a deeper understanding of how users interact with auditory displays. More study that is directly focused on cognition in auditory display is needed.