The interactive auditory demonstrations project

Topics in speech and hearing are well-suited to demonstrations using media other than the printed word. Currently, educators rely largely on passive formats such as the CD collections for general auditory psychophysics [6], auditory scene analysis [2] and cochlear damage [10]. Progress in programming tools and cheap, multimedia hardware now presents the potential to go much further. The interactive auditory demonstrations project aims to provide the user with an environment in which to explore the many phenomena and processes associated with speech and hearing. This promotes a much richer space of parameter manipulation than is possible via passive media. Further, the ability to initiate actions, repeat procedures and benefit from practically any kind of multimodal feedback enables a much wider range of learning possibilities. This paper focusses on the interface issues which are revealed by interactive exploration of the domain. A demonstration of linear prediction is presented to illustrate these issues.