Perceptual analyses of action-related impact sounds

TL;DR

This study investigates how perception of automobile door closure sounds varies between laboratory and real-world contexts, aiming to develop a perceptual model that accounts for environmental and cognitive influences.

Contribution

The paper introduces a perceptual model for impact sounds that considers contextual effects, validated through in situ and laboratory experiments to understand perception differences.

Findings

Perception of impact sounds differs significantly between laboratory and natural settings.

Contextual factors like expectations and attention influence sound perception.

Laboratory models need to incorporate environmental and cognitive variables.

Abstract

Among environmental sounds, we have chosen to study a class of action-related impact sounds: automobile door closure sounds. We propose to describe these sounds using a model composed of perceptual properties. The development of the perceptual model was derived from the evaluation of many door closure sounds measured under controlled laboratory listening conditions. However, listening to such sounds normally occurs within a natural context, which probably modifies their perception. We therefore need to study differences between the real situation and the laboratory situation by following standard practices in order to specify the precise listening conditions and observe the influence of previous learning, expectations, action-perception interactions, and attention given to sounds. Our process consists in doing in situ experiments that are compared with specific laboratory experiments in order to isolate certain influential, context dependent components.