Cross-Modal Equivalence of Visual and Auditory Scatterplots for Exploring Bivariate Data Samples

Abstract

The equivalence of visual and auditory scatterplots was examined in two experiments. Experiment 1 examined the relationship between actual Pearson's r and visual and auditory judgments of direction and magnitude of correlation for 24 bivariate data samples. Experiment 2 directly evaluated visual and auditory perceptual sensitivity to outliers by examining changes in perceived magnitude and direction of correlation estimates for scatterplots from Experiment 1 that were altered by the addition of outlier points. Results suggest that the information conveyed by visual and auditory scatterplots is used very similarly by the two modalities. Both visual and auditory scatterplots are quite efficient in conveying sign and magnitude of correlation, and the effect of outliers on judged magnitude of correlation is similar for the two types of data display.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Axen, U. , & Choi, I. (1995). Using additive sound synthesis to analyze simplicial complexes. In G. Kramer & S. Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Auditory Display, ICAD 1994 (pp. 31–43). Santa Fe, NM: ICAD.

Bobko, P. , & Karren, R. (1979) The perception of Pearson product moment correlations from bivariate scatterplots. Personnel Psychology, 32, 313–325.

Flowers, J. H. , & Hauer, T. A. (1992). The ear's versus the eye's potential to assess characteristics of numeric data: Are we too visuocentric? Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 24, 258–264.

Flowers, J. H. , & Hauer, T. A. (1993) “Sound” alternatives to visual graphics for exploratory data analysis. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 25, 242–249.

Flowers, J. H. , & Hauer, T. A. (1995) Musical versus visual graphs: Cross-modal equivalence in perception of time series data. Human Factors, 37, 553–569.

Jennings, D. , Amabile, T. M. , & Ross, L. (1982). Informal covariation assessment: Data-based judgments. In D. Kahneman , P. Slovic , & A. Tversky (Eds), Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases (pp. 211–230). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lane, D. M. , Anderson, C. A. , & Kellam, K. L. (1985) Judging the relatedness of variables: The psychophysics of covariation detection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 11, 640–649.

Mansur, D. L. , Blattner, M. M. , & Joy, K. I. (1985) Sound-graphs: A numerical data analysis method for the blind. Journal of Medical Systems, 9, 163–174.

Mayer-Kress, G. (1995). Sonification of multiple electrode human scalp electroencephalogram (EEC). In G. Kramer & S. Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Auditory Display, ICAD 1994 (p. 285). Santa Fe, NM: ICAD.

10.

Meyer, J. , & Shinar, D. (1992) Estimating correlations from scatterplots. Human Factors, 34, 335–349.

11.

Strahan, R. F. , & Hansen, C. J. (1978) Underestimating correlation from scatterplots. Applied Psychological Measurement, 2, 543–550.

12.

Turnage, K. D. , Bonebright, T. L. , Buhman, D. C. , & Flowers, J. H. (1996) The effects of task demands on the equivalence of visual and auditory representations of periodic numerical data. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 28, 270–274.