The recognition of environmental sounds is of main interest for the perception of our environment. This study investigates whether visual context can counterbalance the impairing effect of signal degradation (signal-to-noise ratio, SNR) on the identification of environmental sounds. SNRs and semantic congruency between sensory modalities, i.e. auditory and visual information, were manipulated. Two categories of sound sources, living and nonliving were used. The participants’ task was to indicate the category of the sound as fast as possible. Increasing SNRs and congruent audiovisual contexts enhanced identification accuracy and shortened reaction times. The results further indicated that living sound sources were recognized more accurately and faster than nonliving sound sources. A preliminary analysis of the acoustical factors mediating participants’ responses revealed that the harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR) sound signals was significantly associated with the probability of identifying a sound as living. Further, the extent to which participants’ identifications were sensitive to the HNR appeared to be modulated by both SNR and audiovisual congruence.
Click to purchase paper as a non-member or you can login as an AES member to see more options.
No AES members have commented on this paper yet.
To be notified of new comments on this paper you can
subscribe to this RSS feed.
Forum users should login to see additional options.
If you are not yet an AES member and have something important to say about this paper then we urge you to join the AES today and make your voice heard. You can join online today by clicking here.
