Erfanianghasab, Mercedeh; (2024) The Impact of Psychoacoustic and Listener-related Factors on Soundscape and Psychophysiological Correlates. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

As migration to noisy metropolises increases, so do noise-induced health issues, which lead to a reduction in the quality of life. Hence, the soundscape concept emerges to offer a solution for addressing these issues and more importantly improving the quality of life. However, the effects of psychoacoustic and listener-related factors on soundscape formation and its psychophysiological correlates are not fully understood. This thesis aims to explore these influences. The first study investigates the association between psychological well-being, demographic factors, and acoustic environments with soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness using self-report questionnaires, including the Perceived Affective Qualities (PAQ) and World Health Organization-5 (WHO-5) Well-being Index measures, collected insitu. Findings suggest a positive association between psychological well-being and pleasantness, as well as negative associations with eventfulness in males and those not disclosing their occupations. Additionally, retirement, as a proxy for age and gender, significantly contributes to both pleasantness and eventfulness. These results suggest that psychological well-being and demographic factors explain ~1.4% of the variance for pleasantness and 3.9% for eventfulness, while location/environments impact accounts for ~34% and 14% of the variance for pleasantness and eventfulness, respectively. This highlights the roles of psychoacoustic factors more than listener-related factors. The second study examines the impact of perceived loudness and natural and mechanical sound categories as psychoacoustic factors on soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness and its underlying skin conductance response (SCR) in lab-based passive and active listening tasks. Data is obtained through the PAQ, WHO-5 and SCR measures in two groups with varying psychological well-being levels. Results indicate that, regardless of sound category, loudness significantly modulates SCR. However, sound category influences soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness, revealing a mismatch with the underlying SCR. Notably, there is no correlation between SCR amplitude and soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness. Yet, SCR rise-time correlates significantly with pleasantness and eventfulness in both natural and mechanical sounds. No differences are found in pleasantness, eventfulness, and SCR across natural and mechanical sounds at varying loudness levels among individuals with poor and normal psychological well-being. The variations in soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness, driven by sound categories, emphasizes the role of other psychoacoustic factors on the soundscape. The third study examines the link between spectrotemporal characteristics of two sound categories - natural and mechanical - and soundscape eventfulness, measured using a Likert scale in an online active listening. To study these characteristics, noise-vocoding is used which selectively disregards frequency cues while preserving temporal ones. Additionally, bandpass filtering is utilized to isolated certain frequency bands. The results reveal that noise-vocoded sounds, with reduced spectral content/frequency energy, are significantly less eventful than their non-vocoded counterparts. High spectral resolution consistently and significantly associates with higher eventfulness ratings, and its impact differs between natural and mechanical sounds. Differences in eventfulness between natural and mechanical sounds are significant in non-noise-vocoded, low-bandpass, and vocoded sounds. These findings shed light on the effect of spectral content on the soundscape. The fourth study explores the pupil diameter size, an indicator of physiological arousal and microsaccades, an indicator of pleasantness, in response to coloured noises with varying 1/f behaviour in a lab-based listening task, using pupillometry. The results demonstrate no differences in pupil size across white, pink, and brown noises. Similarly, microsaccades reveals no differences among the coloured noises. The findings indicate that, notwithstanding distinctions in the spectral content of coloured noises, the underlying physiological responses exhibit no significant variations in levels of arousal or pleasantness of these noises. Overall, identifying psychoacoustic and listener-related factors affecting soundscape and the psychophysiological underpinnings associated with it may lead to a more efficacious and holistic solution that will leave a robust impact on urban policymaking for addressing urban sound-related problems.

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