Influence of visual setting on sound ratings in an urban environment

We assessed how listener's judgments of a set of urban sound environments were affected by co-occurring visual settings. In artificial audiovisual environments, subjects rated eight urban sound environments (recordings) when they were associated with five visual settings (four color slides varying in degree of urbanization and a control condition with no slide), along two sound scales (Unpleasant-Pleasant and Stressful-Relaxing). In general, the more urban the visual setting, the more negative the sound ratings. However, this influence depended on the type of sound. It was marked for recordings which did not include human sounds (particularly strong for bird song and weaker for traffic noise), but was absent for all recordings which included human sounds (footsteps and voices). Results are discussed in terms of the degree of matching between visual and sound information, and the degree of implication of the perceiver with these sound environments. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.