Brief Training for Performance of a Point Estimation Sonification Task

This study examined different types of brief training for a point estimation task with auditory graphs. Participants estimated the price of a stock at a specific times in a 10-hour trading day as depicted in a sonified graph of the stock price data. Forty Georgia Tech undergraduates completed a pre-test, an experimental training session, and a post-test for the point estimation task. In an extension of Smith and Walker [1], a highly conceptual, task analysis-derived method of training was compared to training paradigms that used either prompting of correct responses or feedback for correct answers during training. Two additional groups, one receiving only practice as training and another completing a filler task, were also included. Results indicate that practice with feedback for the point estimation task produced better post-test performance than all other training conditions.