Impulsive transients grab attention by signaling state changes in physical objects

Evidence

A sound is perceived to be ‘impulsive’, if it contains transients where the level of sound increases rapidly. As shown in Figure 3.13, impulses produce a very strong response in the auditory nerve, while on the other hand, as shown in Figure 10.18, very short sound events produce lower responses than their level would imply. However, transients are often perceived as an increase in annoyance caused by noise, and they very effectively grab a subject’s attention. This attention steering may be seen as a method to make one aware of one’s surroundings, since it may carry valid information about active processes that are often caused by a change of state in physical objects. A strongly impulsive sound also contains high frequencies, since the sound cannot be very short without them. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1232

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader acoustic-communication interest: transient detection as an alarm/awareness mechanism parallels human alarm-signal evolution and modern alert-design. — connects to: Receiver attention state determines signal success — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 571