Abstract:

Paired comparisons of a heterogeneous set of ten natural sounds were collected from 60 listeners in order to determine: (1) if the sensation of unpleasantness is judged consistently across a wide range of acoustic stimuli; and (2) which sound features contribute to that sensation. The judgments conformed with the highly restrictive BTL model [R. D. Luce, Individual Choice Behavior (Wiley, New York, 1959)], thus justifying ratio-scale representation of perceived unpleasantness. The resulting scale values varied by a factor of 100 (diesel engine versus jackhammer). While they were not predicted by differences in A-weighted sound-pressure levels, a linear combination of the psychoacoustic attributes of loudness, roughness, and sharpness accounted for 98% of the variance in perceived unpleasantness.