Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
The dramatic effects of unwanted noises on human health recall the urgency to
improve the sonic environment with structural and behavioral actions. Quiet areas
in urban spaces become strategic for social well-being that must be coupled to the
maximum protection of quality of the sonic environment in remote wild areas
as well.
In urban areas, the abatement of noise appears as an effective action to attract
animal biodiversity, which contributes, when present, to enhancing the sonic
quality of open spaces.
Summary
The sonic environment is the result of the physical properties of the sounds, of the
physiological species-specific perception of every single species, and of cultural/
social interpretation. The sonic ambience associated with visual aesthetics concurs
to human well-being, and the search for a quiet area becomes a prior strategy in
human societies surrounded by increasing anthropogenic noise.
The study of the soundscape from a human perspective requires a psychological
approach that allows a synthesis between visual and acoustic stimuli. The quality of
a sonic ambience increases the acoustic capacity in human hearing and alters the
relationship between acoustic cues and their cultural and social interpretation.
Annoyance is defined as a feeling of displeasure evoked by noise and is used to
evaluate all the negative effects produced by noise on human feelings.
Noise sensitivity is defined as an attitude to rating sound according to an
individual-based criterion and represents a major antecedent of individual noise
annoyance; results are independent of the predisposition to perceive a sound event
more intensely or to the capacity to better discriminate. Noise-sensitive people (NS)
are exposed to a major stressful psychological condition, to an increasing psycho-
logical reactivity of the cardiovascular system, related to psychopathology. Noise
becomes an important component of the well-being for noise-sensitive people
because these people consider noise as threatening element and out of their control.
Noise is discriminated at the same rating when high in NS and non-sensitive people
(NNS) but this evaluation diverges between the two categories when the noise is
administered at low amplitude.
Soundscape description based on physical characteristics seems insufficient to
explain the complex relationship between humans and the sonic environment. A
semantic approach able to describe the feeling that sounds produce in individuals
allows categorizing the cultural and social effects of a subjective sonic environ-
ment. Cacophony, hubbub, constant, and temporal are some of the semantic
categories in which the different sounds/noise are recognized.
Psychoacoustics research aims to find the quantitative relationships between the
physical attributes of sounds and their perceived properties and provides tools to
measure the sensation that sounds produce in the listeners. The most common
auditory attributes used in the psychoacoustic approach are loudness, pitch, dura-
tion, sharpness, roughness, fluctuation, and strength.
Pleasantness, eventfulness, and familiarity are further sound categories or emer-
gent characters of a soundscape; their combination allows the classification of
several sonic environments.
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