Object and setting identification in natural auditory scenesa)

Auditory scene perception allows listeners to identify both the setting and the objects within a scene, supporting decision-making and situational awareness. While visual scene and object recognition are well-studied, less is known about how listeners identify settings (e.g., forest) and objects (e.g., birds) in complex auditory environments. This study examined how scene duration influences listeners' ability to identify settings (e.g., café) and objects (e.g., music, talking, espresso machines) in natural auditory scenes. Participants listened to scenes of varying durations (1, 2, and 4 s) and reported the setting and objects present in each scene. Object identification was more accurate than setting identification across durations, but performance on both tasks benefited from increased durations. Several low- and mid-level acoustic features significantly predicted performance, although these models explained relatively little variance overall. These findings suggest that while acoustic structure contributes to performance, differences between object and setting identification likely reflect interacting perceptual and cognitive processes. Setting identification may depend more on integrating information across multiple sound sources and global scene properties (e.g., openness or naturalness), whereas object identification may rely more on segregation and recognition of individual sound sources and their features.