Next: Multimodal vs. multimedia
Up: Definitions of Basic
Previous: Levels of observation
According to [67], modality is defined as follows:
`` Perception via one of the three perception-channels. You
can distinguish the three modalities: visual, auditive,
and tactile (physiology of senses).''
- visual:
- concerned with, used in seeing (comp. against
optical)
- auditive:
- related to the sense of hearing (comp. against
acoustical)
- tactile:
- experienced by the sense of touch
- haptic:
- most authors are using `` tactile'' and ``
haptic'' as synonyms. However, in [120] tactile as
perception-modality is distinguished from haptic as output manner.
- optics/optical:
- optics is the theory on light as well as the
infrared and ultraviolet radiation. Thus the attribute ``
optical'' refers to physical quantities and laws rather than to
physiological ones. (comp. against visual)
- acoustics/acoustical:
- acoustics is the theory on vibrations
and oscillations in elastic mediums, especially of sound, its
generation, spreading, and its reception. Thus the attribute ``
acoustical'' refers to physical rather than to physiological
quantities and laws. (comp. against auditive)
The author of [67] defines only three modalities and
associates them with three of the human senses. Although they will be the
three ones considered in , there are some more senses as defined by
physiology:
Table 1.1
: Different senses and their corresponding modalities (taken
from: [311])
In our opinion, the sense of smell and the sense of taste
are not very interesting for our concerns (see 2.1.1 for a
deeper discussion). However, the sense of balance seems to become
more and more interesting with respect to virtual reality environments
(see 4.4 ). Presently it is already used in flight simulators for
example.
Whenever more than two of these modalities are involved, we will speak of
multimodality. To be more precise, in some cases we will also use
the term bimodal (or bimodality) to denote the usage of
exactly two different modalities. In this sense, every human-computer
interaction has to be considered as multimodal, because the user
looks at the monitor, types in some commands or moves
the mouse (or some other device) and clicks at certain positions,
hears the reaction (beeps, key clicks, etc.) and so on.
Therefore, in our understanding of multimodality is restricted to
those interactions which comprise more than one modality on either the
input (i.e., perception) or the output (i.e., control) side of the loop
and the use of more than one device on either side. Thus, the
combination of, e.g., visual, auditive, and tactile feedback which is
experienced by typing on a keyboard is explicitly excluded, whereas the
combination of visual and auditive output produced by the monitor and a
loudspeaker when an error occurred is a 'real' multimodal (or --- in this
case --- bimodal) event.
Next: Multimodal vs. multimedia
Up: Definitions of Basic
Previous: Levels of observation
Esprit Project 8579/MIAMI (Schomaker et al., '95)
Thu May 18 16:00:17 MET DST 1995