Pleasantness and cued recall performance for environmental sounds
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2016-10-14
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Towson University. Department of Audiology, Speech-Language Pathology and Deaf Studies
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Abstract
The objective of the present study was twofold: to obtain subjective ratings of pleasantness for a set of thirty-six environmental sounds and to determine if the pleasantness of these sounds is related to performance on a cued-recall task. Fourteen participants rated a set of thirty-six environmental sounds for pleasantness. A multidimensional scaling approach was used to determine the perceptual pleasantness space for this sound set. This analysis revealed that sounds clustered along the dimensions of naturalness and continuousness. An additional sample of thirty participants performed a cued recall task, in which listeners were asked to judge whether sounds had been presented during a previous study phase. The results of this experiment indicated no significant relationship between sound pleasantness and accuracy on the cued recall task. A relationship between false memories and pleasantness appeared to be present, with more false memories occurring for unpleasant sounds. However, this relationship did not reach a level of significance. The results of this investigation suggest that continuousness and naturalness are related to pleasantness for environmental sounds. Future research on environmental sound perception should focus on determining the nature of a potential relationship between pleasantness and recall for environmental sounds.