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Identification of Everyday Sounds Affects Their Pleasantness.
Laurie M Heller1, Jessica M Smith1
1Auditory Lab, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.
Frontiers in Psychology
|August 8, 2022
Summary
Sound identification significantly impacts emotional responses to everyday noises. Misidentifying a sound
Area of Science:
- Psychoacoustics
- Auditory perception
- Human emotional response
Background:
- Sound identification is known to influence perceived unpleasantness.
- Existing evidence is limited to a few select sounds.
- The impact of misidentification on emotional valence requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of source identification in emotional responses to everyday sounds.
- To test if misperceiving a sound's category alters its pleasantness.
- To gather robust evidence on sound identification and emotional valence.
Main Methods:
- Listeners judged causal properties (actions, materials, agents) of various sounds.
- Participants identified and rated the pleasantness of sounds across emotional categories (Neutral, Misophonic, Unpleasant, Pleasant).
- Spectral degradation (envelope vocoding) was applied to induce sound misidentifications.
Main Results:
- Pleasantness ratings changed in predicted directions when sounds were misidentified.
- Mishearing sounds as belonging to different emotional categories altered their perceived pleasantness.
- The study confirmed that altered sound identification leads to altered emotional valence.
Conclusions:
- Source identification plays a crucial role in modulating the emotional response to sounds.
- The emotional valence of a sound can be manipulated by altering its perceived source or category.
- This research provides robust evidence for the link between sound identification and emotional experience.
Keywords:
causal propertiescontext effectseveryday soundsmisophoniasound categorysound emotionsound identificationunpleasant soundsMore Related Videos
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