Cognitive context determines whether a sound feature is good or bad

Evidence

The theory of psychoacoustics, discussed in Chapter 8, uses the human as a simple metering device, where sound events evoke auditory events with attributes that can be measured using psychoacoustic techniques. In psychoacoustics, expectations, mood, and other cognitive factors of individual subjects are minimized when the values of attributes are measured. In the context of sound quality, cognitive factors can no longer be disregarded, since ‘quality of sound’ means the suitability of a sound to a specific situation, and such suitability cannot be judged without cognitive functions. The same sound may produce different sound quality in different contexts, depending on the mode of operation and the expectations of a subject. For example, higher intelligibility of speech improves the sound quality in mobile phones, but the ability of a worker to concentrate in an open-plan office is impaired by intelligible speech from neighbouring cubicles. The properties of sound can thus have either negative or positive effects on sound quality. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2313

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The intelligible-speech double bind (good for phones, bad for open offices) connects to how the same physical signal carries opposite value depending on goal — parallels the earlier soundscape material on signal vs. noise being context-defined.
• CANDY: “Intelligible speech is great in your phone but ruins your open-plan office concentration” is a clean, tweetable example of context flipping a sound’s valuer.

Related

• Sound quality judgments depend on listener context and expectations (similarity 0.93)
• Soundscape quality depends on wanted-versus-unwanted context, not decibel level (similarity 0.83)
• Linguistic context lets listeners understand speech at lower acoustic intelligibility (similarity 0.82)
• Product sound quality depends on task context, not just pleasantness. (similarity 0.81)
• Sound perception is shaped by the listener’s expectations and context of use (similarity 0.81)
• Cognitive abilities affect speech-in-noise perception situation-specifically while hearing thresholds act uniformly (similarity 0.81)
• Visual and contextual cues bias human judgments of sound quality (similarity 0.80)
• Both auditory and cognitive factors determine intelligibility in noise (similarity 0.80)
• The relevance of a cognitive ability depends on the listening situation (similarity 0.79)
• Judged pleasantness does not track the physical quality of a sound (similarity 0.79)
• Listener attitude toward a sound, not just acoustics, shapes perceived pleasantness (similarity 0.79)
• Sound-source evaluation reflects personal culture more than physical acoustic properties (similarity 0.79)
• Natural-sounding speech can still be poorly intelligible (similarity 0.79)
• All sound quality judgments derive from properties of the human auditory system. (similarity 0.78)
• Cognitive contributions to speech perception vary by listening situation (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Linguistic context lets listeners understand speech at lower acoustic intelligibility #exemplifies (0.80) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2430
• Product sound quality depends on task context, not just pleasantness. #qualifies (0.75) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2493