Using the Major and Minor Mode to Create Affectively–charged Earcons

The importance of the structured fabrication of auditory (feedback) signals like earcons is common knowledge in the ICAD community. To create such structured families of earcons musical transformations like rhythm or pitch (and many others) are usually employed. However, one important transformation in Western tonal music, that of the distinction between major and minor mode, to our knowledge, has not been exploited, despite the fact that the affective connotation of the major and minor mode might be useful for research into auditory signals for affective human– computer interfaces. The present study investigated whether the transformation to major or minor mode can be used to create affectively–charged earcons for use in affective– computing research [1]. The affective–congruency effect that we obtained provides evidence that the processing of affective information can interfere with making rational, cognitive decisions. We argue that the transformation to the major or minor mode is suitable to create affectively–charged earcons and that it is important to ensure affective correspondence in computer interfaces to be able to realize optimal performance levels.