Re: sex differences in perception of environmental sounds

[Guillaume Lemaitre <guillaum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Joanna,
In a recent article [1], we have investigated how different listeners 
categorize environmental sounds: they were presented with a set of 
sounds recorded in a kitchen, and required to categorize them, according 
to whichever criteria they found relevant. Afterwards, they had to 
indicate if they had used one of the following similarity to make each 
of their groups: acoustical, based on the similarity of the causal 
event, based on semantic associations. We found that the main difference 
was between listeners who were "expert" (acousticians, 
psychoacousticians, sound engineers, professional musicians, etc.), and 
those who had no particular training in listening. I just reanalyzed the 
data to check a potential effect of gender: there was none.

All our sounds were "sound of objects", so we had nothing like baby 
crying. And, in my opinion, environmental sounds do not include human 
vocalizations. Personally, I always use Vanderveer's definition [2]:
"... any possible audible acoustic event which is caused by motions in 
the ordinary human environment. (...) Besides 1) having real events as 
their sources (...) 2) [they] are usually more ``complex'' than 
laboratory sinusoids, (...) 3) [they] are meaningful, in the sense that 
they specify events in the environment. (...) 4) The sounds to be 
considered are not part of a communication system, or communication 
sounds, they are taken in their literal rather than signal or symbolic 
interpretation."
To me, the most important part of this definition is that they are not 
part of a communication system. This excludes speech, music, and 
possibly, animal communication (though I am not completely sure of the 
latter). In fact, and in my opinion, the perception of the sound of, 
say, a ball bouncing is very different from speech: whereas, in the 
latter case, both the producer and the receiver use an explicit symbolic 
system to communicate (associate a meaning to the sound), there is no 
such system in the former. We, as human listeners, identify that a ball 
is bouncing, based on some psychological mechanism that is somehow 
capable of capturing the physical regularities of our environment. To my 
knowledge, these mechanisms are far from being understood. Some 
behavioral and neurological data suggest that these mechanisms might 
have a lot in common with language perception (you can have a look James 
Ballas' work, or recent EEG studies in semantic priming with 
environmental sounds), but this is something that requires of lot more 
of investigation (and is fascinating area).

I am not at all a specialist in developmental psychology, but I remember 
having read somewhere that baby use different cries to mean different 
things. If this is correct, in my opinion, the perception of baby cries 
is therefore more related to the development of language in infants (and 
especially how the specificities of the adult/infant simplified 
communication participates to the development of language) than to 
environmental sound perception. Just curious to know what people from 
the field thing about it.

Guillaume

[1] Guillaume Lemaitre, Olivier Houix, Nicolas Misdariis and Patrick 
Susini (2010), “Listener expertise and sound identification influence 
the categorization of environmental sounds", Journal of Experimental 
Psychology: applied, vol. 16(1), pp. 16-32.

[2] Nancy Jean Vanderveer, "Ecological acoustics: human perception of 
environmental sounds", PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1979




Joanna Kantor-Martynuska wrote:
> Dear Auditory List,
>
> I would very much appreciate your suggestions about the literature 
> regarding sex differences in perception of environmental sounds. I’m 
> intrested in physiological indices of auditory predispositions for 
> perception of different sounds we encounter in our natural environment.
>
> Looking forward to any interesting suggestions or links.
>
> Best,
> Joanna Kantor 


--
Guillaume Lemaitre
Post-doctoral Research Associate

Carnegie Mellon University
Department of Psychology - Auditory Lab
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
tel: +1 412-268-4193