The Role of Auditory Attention and Auditory Perception in the Design of Real-Time Sonification of Anaesthesia Variables

Sonification—the representation of data relations in sound relations—is attracting increasing attention within the human factors community as a way of providing human operators of real-time processes with continuous information about the state of a system. This is particularly needed in anesthesia, where the anesthetist must divide attention across a wide variety of tasks. Efforts to design effective sonifications of the physiological state of anesthetized patients, however, have not emerged from basic scientific studies of auditory attention. Literature reviews indicate that the kind of basic scientific research on auditory attention that would support the design of sonifications does not exist. The work described herein is the first part of a research program in which we build a foundation for our design of anesthesia sonification in a series of basic studies of auditory attention. These studies may contribute information that will support sonification design beyond the anaesthesia application.