ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how sounds other than the engineered auditory alerts and crew speech represent information in the cockpit. For lack of a better term, this is referred to as ‘natural’ sound, as, for example, the sounds naturally produced by system events, such as mechanical failures. The sounds referred to in the briefs were typically produced by the engine or a mechanical failure in the aircraft structure. The chapter presents an analysis of the occurrence of these types of sounds in accident reports. A general framework developed by F. Guyot is presented which is useful in characterising the cognitive processes in sound interpretation. R. M. Schafer’s taxonomy is based upon references to sound in published writing and emphasises the type of human involvement in the sound- producing process. The categories he proposed were natural sounds, human sounds, societal sounds, mechanical sounds, quiet/silence and sounds as indicators, including horns, clocks, telephones and warnings.
