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Abstract

At least since 1975 the "pleasantness" of a sound is discussed from many different angles (Ely 1975; Aures 1984; Halpern etal. 1986; Vaschillo 2003; Neumann & Waters 2006; Cox 2008), but often chalkboard squeaking or scratching a chalkboard with finger nails tops the list of unpleasant sounds. The aim of the presented study is to detect specific parts of the sounds that make chalkboard squeaking particularly unpleasant. With a combination of perception experiments and electro-physiological measurements, it was analyzed to what extent the knowledge about the sounds influenced the subjects' judgments and/or the physiological reactions. Basically the study is a replication of Halpern etal. (1986), whose methods were extended by several sophisticated sound analysis and re-synthesis techniques and the measurement of some electro-physiological parameters (heart rate and skin resistance) during listening. First results show that especially the modification of the tonal parts as well as applying a filter between 2000 and 4000 Hz led to a more pleasant sound perception. Almost all stimuli were rated more unpleasant if the subjects knew about the nature of the sounds.

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... Non-linguistic sounds have great advantages for the mapping of perception to objective spectro-temporal features as they are complex, have meaning and are familiar, but do not have the confounding overlay of semantic and linguistic constraints of language. Some studies have probed various perceptual properties of NLSs (Halpern et al., 1986;Ballas, 1993;Penrose and Clark, 1994;Cycowicz and Friedman, 1998;Lewis et al., 2005;Reddy et al., 2009;Reuter and Oehler, 2011;Singh, 2011;Kirmse et al., 2012;Talkington et al., 2012) to make findings such as the importance of spectral features to percepts of unpleasantness in NLSs (Halpern et al., 1986;Cox, 2008;Reuter and Oehler, 2011). However, almost all of these studies focused on only a single percept and outside of special sets or precepts of sounds such as musical timbre (Grey, 1977;Grey and Gordon, 1978), urgency (Momtahan, 1991;Hellier et al., 1993;Burt et al., 1995;Edworthy et al., 1995;Haas and Edworthy, 1996;Graham, 1999), and identification of materials, e.g., the length of a material being struck and whether it is made of metal or wood (Warren and Verbrugge, 1984;Lakatos et al., 1997), tones (Pollack and Ficks, 1954), or subjects, e.g., the gender of a human walker (Li et al., 1991), little is known generally about the perceptual mappings between complex auditory stimuli and their objective features. ...
... Non-linguistic sounds have great advantages for the mapping of perception to objective spectro-temporal features as they are complex, have meaning and are familiar, but do not have the confounding overlay of semantic and linguistic constraints of language. Some studies have probed various perceptual properties of NLSs (Halpern et al., 1986;Ballas, 1993;Penrose and Clark, 1994;Cycowicz and Friedman, 1998;Lewis et al., 2005;Reddy et al., 2009;Reuter and Oehler, 2011;Singh, 2011;Kirmse et al., 2012;Talkington et al., 2012) to make findings such as the importance of spectral features to percepts of unpleasantness in NLSs (Halpern et al., 1986;Cox, 2008;Reuter and Oehler, 2011). However, almost all of these studies focused on only a single percept and outside of special sets or precepts of sounds such as musical timbre (Grey, 1977;Grey and Gordon, 1978), urgency (Momtahan, 1991;Hellier et al., 1993;Burt et al., 1995;Edworthy et al., 1995;Haas and Edworthy, 1996;Graham, 1999), and identification of materials, e.g., the length of a material being struck and whether it is made of metal or wood (Warren and Verbrugge, 1984;Lakatos et al., 1997), tones (Pollack and Ficks, 1954), or subjects, e.g., the gender of a human walker (Li et al., 1991), little is known generally about the perceptual mappings between complex auditory stimuli and their objective features. ...
... An algorithmic complexity measure was also included, the LZ measure (Xu et al., 1997;Radhakrishnan and Gangadhar, 1998;Zhang et al., 2000;Wu and Xu, 2001;Zhang et al., 2001;Huang et al., 2003;Khalatur et al., 2003;Szczepański et al., 2003;Watanabe et al., 2003). The remaining objective measures have been used in previous research on sound identification or perception: peaks-related measures (Gygi et al., 2007); fractal dimension estimates (Spasić et al., 2005;Shibayama, 2006;Raghavendra and Dutt, 2010), using both the Higuchi method (Higuchi, 1988) and the NLD method (Kalauzi et al., 2009); mean spectral centroid (Grey and Gordon, 1978;Shao et al., 2003;Gygi et al., 2007;Maher and Studniarz, 2012); root mean squares (RMSs) of discrete frequency ranges (Halpern et al., 1986;Gygi et al., 2007;Reuter and Oehler, 2011); harmonicity (Yumoto et al., 1982;Boersma, 1993;Lewis et al., 2005;Gygi et al., 2007); spectral flatness (Jayant and Noll, 1984;Boersma, 2001); and spectral structure variability (SSV) or index (SSI) (Reddy et al., 2009;Singh, 2011;Lewis et al., 2012). For a more detailed discussion of these methods, including their derivations, please see Supplementary Material 2. ...
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Non-linguistic sounds (NLSs) are a core feature of our everyday life and many evoke powerful cognitive and emotional outcomes. The subjective perception of NLSs by humans has occasionally been defined for single percepts, e.g., their pleasantness, whereas many NLSs evoke multiple perceptions. There has also been very limited attempt to determine if NLS perceptions are predicted from objective spectro-temporal features. We therefore examined three human perceptions well-established in previous NLS studies (“Complexity,” “Pleasantness,” and “Familiarity”), and the accuracy of identification, for a large NLS database and related these four measures to objective spectro-temporal NLS features, defined using rigorous mathematical descriptors including stimulus entropic and algorithmic complexity measures, peaks-related measures, fractal dimension estimates, and various spectral measures (mean spectral centroid, power in discrete frequency ranges, harmonicity, spectral flatness, and spectral structure). We mapped the perceptions to the spectro-temporal measures individually and in combinations, using complex multivariate analyses including principal component analyses and agglomerative hierarchical clustering.
... Moreover, previous work has often used only one cry stimulus, making it hard to decipher if the acoustic properties of that cry (and not its negative emotional content) result in infant negative responses. Considering that at least adults are sensitive to acoustic variation in infant crying and can link it to different levels of distress intensity (Esposito et al. 2015), and that even nonsocial aversive sounds, such as fingernails on a blackboard, can elicit emotional reactions (Reuter and Oehler 2011), the selection of appropriate stimuli and controls is especially important. An additional limitation of previous contagious crying research with regards to stimuli selection is the use of long and intense distress stimuli. ...
... Infants showed greater reactivity to crying than to the artificial aversive control stimulus, both physiologically and behaviourally. Although both sounds may be acoustically aversive, which explains the arousal response to the artificial sound (Reuter and Oehler 2011), the crying stimuli contained additional emotional content leading to emotional contagion. This contagious arousal then motivates an empathic comforting response from the listener (Preston and de Waal 2002). ...
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Contagious crying in infants has been considered an early marker of their sensitivity to others’ emotions, a form of emotional contagion, and an early basis for empathy. However, it remains unclear whether infant distress in response to peer distress is due to the emotional content of crying or acoustically aversive properties of crying. Additionally, research remains severely biased towards samples from Europe and North America. In this study, we address both aspects by employing the novel and non‐invasive method of infrared thermal imaging, in combination with behavioural markers of emotional contagion, to measure emotional arousal during a contagious crying paradigm in a cross‐cultural sample of 10‐ to 11‐month‐old infants from rural and urban Uganda and the United Kingdom ( N = 313). Infants heard social stimuli of positive, negative, and neutral emotional valence (infant laughing, crying, and babbling, respectively) and a non‐social, acoustically matched artificial aversive sound. Results revealed that overall changes (as opposed to positive or negative) in infant nasal temperature were larger in response to crying and laughing compared to the artificial aversive sound and larger for crying than for babbling. Infants showed stronger behavioural responses for crying than for the artificial stimulus, as well as for crying than for laughing. Overall, our results support the view that infants within the first year of life experience emotional contagion in response to peer distress, an effect that is not just explained by the aversive nature of the stimuli. Sensitivity to others’ emotional signals in the first year of life may provide the core building blocks for empathy. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/JbwL3BHkKlU .
... Additionally, noise can impact work performance and learning ability [43,44]. In similar studies, high-frequency noise was typically used as the stress source [45,46], with the duration for inducing mental stress usually being 10 min [47]. Therefore, high frequency noise was used as the pressure source in this study. ...
... performance and learning ability [43,44]. In similar studies, high-frequency noise was typically used as the stress source [45,46], with the duration for inducing mental stress usually being 10 min [47]. Therefore, high frequency noise was used as the pressure source in this study. ...
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People working and studying indoors for a long time can easily experience mental fatigue and stress. Virtual natural elements introduced into indoor environments can stimulate the human visual and auditory senses, thus relieving psychological stress. In this study, stress induction was achieved through noise playback, and the recovery effects on psychological stress of three set indoor environments, visual, auditory, and audio-visual, were investigated through changes in subjects’ facial expressions, electromyographic (EMG) signals, and subjective questionnaires. The experiment found that after stress induction through noise, the participants’ stress levels changed significantly. At this time, the subject scored low on the questionnaire, with electromyography readings higher than usual, and micro-expression recognition indicated negative emotions. After the restoration effects under the three working conditions of visual, auditory, and audio-visual combination, the average EMG values during the recovery period decreased from the baseline period (10 min after the subject acclimated to the environment), respectively. The results indicate that all three restoration conditions have the effect of relieving psychological stress, with the stress recovery effects of auditory and audio-visual conditions being superior to visual conditions. This study is of great significance for creating comfortable indoor environments and minimizing psychological pressure on indoor office workers.
... 2. Factors to consider for a model of misophonia (a) The source of the sound is an important factor in triggering reactions There are a number of studies showing that the source of sound is important for setting the context within which sound is perceived. For example, Reuter & Oehler [15] presented two sounds: fingernails scratching on a chalkboard and the sound of squeaking chalk on a slate, which are typically perceived as aversive by most people [16], and asked a group of participants to rate the aversiveness of the sounds. Half of the participants were told the true source of the sounds and the other half were made to believe that the sounds were part of contemporary music. ...
... In the context of a social cognitive model of misophonia, one may assume that training participants to re-frame the context of the stimulus could provide relief and act as a treatment strategy. Relevant to this, in a study of non-misophonia participants, galvanic skin responses-an indicator of stress-caused by 'nails screeching' on a blackboard were diminished and auditory stimuli were rated less unpleasant if participants were under the cued impression that the stimulus was from a piece of contemporary music [15]. Additionally, any therapies based around a model that places a greater emphasis on the context of the stimulus, rather than the stimulus per se, would likely be generalizable to the visual analogue of misophonia, i.e. misokinesia, of which to-date-to our knowledgeonly two dedicated studies exist [59,60]. ...
Article
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Misophonia is commonly classified by intense emotional reactions to common everyday sounds. The condition has an impact both on the mental health of its sufferers and societally. As yet, formal models on the basis of misophonia are in their infancy. Based on developing behavioural and neuroscientific research we are gaining a growing understanding of the phenomenology and empirical findings in misophonia, such as the importance of context, types of coping strategies used and the activation of particular brain regions. In this article, we argue for a model of misophonia that includes not only the sound but also the context within which sound is perceived and the emotional reaction triggered. We review the current behavioural and neuroimaging literature, which lends support to this idea. Based on the current evidence, we propose that misophonia should be understood within the broader context of social perception and cognition, and not restricted within the narrow domain of being a disorder of auditory processing. We discuss the evidence in support of this hypothesis, as well as the implications for potential treatment approaches. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Sensing and feeling: an integrative approach to sensory processing and emotional experience’.
... Rubbing white bamboo reeds and burning incense in the middle of the field (molapo) are two traditional methods that are considered scientifically acceptable. First, rubbing white bamboo while reciting a spell produced a creaking sound which Reuter and Oehler (2011) proved could cause discomfort. The friction of the two bamboo blades could cause a physical reaction that causes a significant change in the conductivity of the skin. ...
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Government programs in agriculture, such as extension and seed and fertilizer assistance, have increased maize production, but also threaten the preservation of traditional wisdom. This article discusses intractable pest infestations as a major problem in maize farming in Molamahu Village, Gorontalo Regency, Gorontalo Province. Although many agricultural technologies have been developed, they have not been able to effectively control these pests. This study aims to explore the use of traditional methods by farmers in overcoming pest problems, as well as to demonstrate the effectiveness of local wisdom in this context. A qualitative approach was used by interviewing senior farmers and observing the practices of young farmers. The results of this study present clear and structured findings regarding the effectiveness of traditional methods in controlling maize pests. This study found that some traditional methods previously considered irrational turned out to have a robust scientific basis. These results confirm that local knowledge has great potential to strengthen eco-friendly pest control strategies in maize farming. The finding in this research underscores the importance of recognizing and utilizing local wisdom in the development of sustainable agricultural technology.
... When assessing the spectral and temporal properties of common sounds that are unpleasant to listen to, for example, chalk on a chalkboard, carrier frequencies (that convey the overall pitch of the sound) between 2.5-5.5 kHz and 1-16 Hz modulation frequencies (that can add "texture" or "wobble" to a sound) were identified as common factors (Kumar et al., 2008). However, there is some evidence to suggest that knowing the source of the unpleasant sounds such as chalk on a chalkboard can make sounds even more unpleasant (Reuter and Oehler, 2011). Natural environmental sounds and speech have specific pitch and loudness properties and these properties can predict human auditory psychophysical thresholds to some extent (Monson et al., 2013). ...
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Introduction Sensory discomfort occurs in clinical and non-clinical populations. While some of the parameters that evoke visual discomfort have been identified, the parameters of sounds that evoke auditory discomfort are largely unknown. Methods We presented various sounds and asked participants to rate the discomfort they experienced. In Experiments 1 and 2 tones were presented at frequencies between 0.25-8 kHz and modulated sinusoidally in amplitude at frequencies between 0-32 Hz. In Experiment 3 tones were swept in frequency from 500 Hz-2 kHz at sweep rates of 5-50 per second. In Experiment 4, sweeps varied in frequency range and central frequency. Results Discomfort increased with frequency. The effects of the amplitude modulation and sweep rate on discomfort were relatively small and were experienced mainly at low modulation frequencies and high sweep rates. Individuals who experienced visuo-perceptual distortions in the Pattern Glare (PG) Test reported greater auditory discomfort. Discussion This suggests that sensory sensitivity in one modality may occur in another.
... Knowledge that the triggers are being produced intentionally from a video, as opposed to naturally in real life, may change one's interpretation. Similar instances of contextual information changing aesthetic judgement exist in music and visual art, such as unpleasant sounds being perceived positively in the context of contemporary music (Reuter & Oehler, 2011), or a painting gaining poignancy upon learning about the artist's circumstances at the time (Berger et al., 1972). Alternatively, the lack of control that a listener possesses when a trigger occurs naturalistically may result in frustration or discomfort. ...
Article
A narrative review of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) was carried out. Definitional factors relevant to ASMR were canvassed. Related, but distinctly unique, sensorial phenomena, including frisson, synaesthesia, and misophonia were considered. Finally, the status of literature with respect to clinical outcomes, individual differences, and current research applications was evaluated. ASMR is a nascent phenomenon that has rapidly progressed in scope and depth of study throughout the past decade; a notable shift from brief-form studies to an increase in formalised trials is noted. Yet, critical questions remain unaddressed, including expectancy and placebo effects, that future research should interrogate.
... While the vast majority of studies focused on the aesthetic impressions of art (Ramachandran and Hirstein, 1999;Joy and Sherry, 2003;Bahrami-Ehsan et al., 2015;Myszkowski and Zenasni, 2016) or music (Vuust and Kringelbach, 2010;Reuter and Oehler, 2011;Brattico et al., 2013;Starcke et al., 2019), the studies that investigate the aesthetic judgements of linguistic stimuli are rare. Meanwhile, languages are routinely subjected to aesthetic judgments by the general public. ...
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Introduction Previous aesthetic research has set its main focus on visual and auditory, primarily music, stimuli with only a handful of studies exploring the aesthetic potential of linguistic stimuli. In the present study, we investigate for the first time the effects of personality traits on phonaesthetic language ratings. Methods Twenty-three under-researched, “rarer” (less learned and therefore less known as a foreign language or L2) and minority languages were evaluated by 145 participants in terms of eroticism, beauty, status, and orderliness, subjectively perceived based on language sound. Results Overall, Romance languages (Catalan, Portuguese, Romanian) were still among the top six erotic languages of the experiment together with “Romance-sounding,” but less known languages like Breton and Basque. Catalan and Portuguese were also placed among the top six most beautiful languages. The Germanic languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic) were perceived as more prestigious/higher in terms of status, however to some degree conditioned by their recognition/familiarity. Thus, we partly replicated the results of our earlier studies on the Romance language preferences (the so-called Latin Lover effect) and the perceived higher status of the Germanic languages and scrutinized again the effects of familiarity/language recognition, thereby calling into question the above mentioned concepts of the Latin Lover effect and the status of Germanic languages. We also found significant effects of personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness) on phonaesthetic ratings. Different personality types appreciated different aspects of languages: e.g., whereas neurotics had strong opinions about languages' eroticism, more conscientious participants gave significantly different ratings for status. Introverts were more generous in their ratings overall in comparison to extroverts. We did not find strong connections between personality types and specific languages or linguistic features (sonority, speech rate). Overall, personality traits were largely overridden by other individual differences: familiarity with languages (socio-cultural construals, the Romanization effect—perceiving a particular language as a Romance language) and participants' native language/L1. Discussion For language education in the global context, our results mean that introducing greater linguistic diversity in school and universities might result in greater appreciation and motivation to learn lesser-known and minority languages. Even though we generally prefer Romance languages to listen to and to study, different personality types are attracted to different language families and thus make potentially successful learners of these languages.
... Concretely, the work in [51] shows the sounds with high unpleas- antness, e.g., knife or fork on bottle, chalk on blackboard, to be in the range of 2kHz and up to 7kHz. Also, the authors in [52] point to the range of 2kHz-4kHz as being annoying for human years. For this reason, we choose to cut the frequencies in the range of 2kHz-7kHz and present the results in Figure 28. ...
Article
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Fingerprinting smartphones based on acoustic characteristics of their loudspeaker may have a number of applications in device-to-device authentication as well as in forensic investigations. In this work we propose an efficient fingerprinting methodology by using the roll-off characteristics of the device speaker, i.e., the transition between the low and high stopbands to the passband segment of the speaker. We extract roll-off characteristics from sweep signals, also know as chirps, that are commonly used in practice to test speaker response. This procedure appears to be more stable against variations of the volume level and allows the use of simple linear approximations, which are intuitive and easy to compute, in order to extract the fingerprint. To increase detection accuracy, on the basis of the proven performance of deep learning techniques, a convolutional and a bi-directional long short term memory neural network are further proposed and their performance demonstrated for authentication purposes. While numerous applications may be envisioned, we specifically focus on the use of speaker characteristics in relation to in-vehicle infotainment units, checking if recordings from these units can be used to fingerprint a specific phone.
... In this sense, anticipation or expectancy, which also depends on musical knowledge, is the essential mechanism for a pleasurable experience (Steinbeis et al., 2006;Vuust and Kringelbach, 2010). Some listeners experience "chills, " an intense physical sensation such as goosebumps or trembling, in response to a favorite tune or melody (Reuter and Oehler, 2011;Starcke et al., 2019), and while musical events that elicit such reactions vary from person to person, there are a few patterns that might be connected to chills: the onset of vocals, the beginning of a structurally new part, and contrasting voices are strong acoustic triggers (Grewe et al., 2007;Guhn et al., 2007). ...
Article
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This article concerns sound aesthetic preferences for European foreign languages. We investigated the phonetic-acoustic dimension of the linguistic aesthetic pleasure to describe the “music” found in European languages. The Romance languages, French, Italian, and Spanish, take a lead when people talk about melodious language – the music-like effects in the language (a.k.a., phonetic chill). On the other end of the melodiousness spectrum are German and Arabic that are often considered sounding harsh and un-attractive. Despite the public interest, limited research has been conducted on the topic of phonaesthetics, i.e., the subfield of phonetics that is concerned with the aesthetic properties of speech sounds (Crystal, 2008). Our goal is to fill the existing research gap by identifying the acoustic features that drive the auditory perception of language sound beauty. What is so music-like in the language that makes people say “it is music in my ears”? We had 45 central European participants listening to 16 auditorily presented European languages and rating each language in terms of 22 binary characteristics (e.g., beautiful – ugly and funny – boring) plus indicating their language familiarities, L2 backgrounds, speaker voice liking, demographics, and musicality levels. Findings revealed that all factors in complex interplay explain a certain percentage of variance: familiarity and expertise in foreign languages, speaker voice characteristics, phonetic complexity, musical acoustic properties, and finally musical expertise of the listener. The most important discovery was the trade-off between speech tempo and so-called linguistic melody (pitch variance): the faster the language, the flatter/more atonal it is in terms of the pitch (speech melody), making it highly appealing acoustically (sounding beautiful and sexy), but not so melodious in a “musical” sense.
... neutral sounds, and that their reciprocal directional connectivity encodes both physical properties and subjective valence (perceived unpleasantness) of these generic aversive sounds (Kumar et al. , 2012) . A relation between physical properties (frequency range) of these sounds and their perceived unpleasantness of such sounds had been previously shown (Halpern et al. , 1986;Reuter and Oehler, 2011) . However, when trigger sounds were contrasted with generic aversive sounds in people with misophonia, no significant increase in brain activity was detected in the amygdala , and only a marginally significant increased functional connectivity between the amygdala and the anterior insula -rather than the auditory cortex -was reported . ...
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For individuals with misophonia, specific innocuous sensory stimuli - such as hearing another person chewing or breathing - evoke strong negative emotional and physiological responses, such as extreme anger, disgust, stress and anxiety. Instead people with misophonia do not experience or display atypical reactions to generic aversive sounds such as screams or nails scratching on a blackboard. Misophonia appears to be unrelated to neurological trauma or hearing deficit, and features a characteristic developmental pattern. Its aetiology is currently unknown. The few previous fMRI studies on misophonia showed that sufferers feature increased dorsal anterior insula activity during trigger vs. generic aversive sounds. While this effect likely reflects the saliency associated with the perception of trigger sounds in people with misophonia, in the present fMRI study we investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the emotional reaction to trigger stimuli. To this aim, we probe the task-dependent connectivity of mid-cingulate, medial premotor and ventrolateral premotor cortex. We observe that only in participants with misophonia the presentation of trigger audio-visuals prompts an increased interaction of these three brain regions with the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. This brain region is crucial for behavioural inhibition mediated by cognitive and emotional content (such as in reward-reversal learning) and is part of the temporo-amygdala-orbitofrontal network, which integrates visceral and emotional states with cognition and behaviour. We also observe that in people with misophonia trigger sounds prompt a significant increase in the interaction between mid-cingulate and the primary auditory cortex. Our study replicates previous results and expands the network of brain regions involved in misophonia. The involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex suggests a defective functioning of high-order integrative processes allowing the reappraisal of experience-dependent negative emotional association with harmless sensory stimuli, and sheds light on the mechanisms underlying the compulsive nature of the misophonic reaction. The increased interaction, rather than the overall activity, of the primary auditory cortex with the mid-cingulate supports the hypothesis that the emotional response in misophonia is subserved by an indirect auditory-limbic pathway processing the subjective valence of specific sounds, rather than their physical properties alone.
... Away from the context of food and drink, other distinctive sounds, such as, for example, the sound of fingernails screeching on a chalkboard have also been documented as being a highly-aversive sound for many people [3][4][5][6]. In the latter case, the suggestion is that the physical properties of the auditory stimulus may be similar to the auditory distress signals made by many animals [7]. ...
Article
A growing number of food and beverage brands have recently started to become interested in trying to link extraordinary emotional experiences to their product offerings. Oftentimes, such extraordinary responses are triggered by product-extrinsic auditory and, to a lesser extent, visual stimuli, such as music or videos having particular sensory qualities or semantic meaning. While much of the interest in this area recently has been linked to the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), it is worth noting that there are also a number of other responses, such as chills, thrills, and so-called `skin orgasms' that have been documented previously, if not always in a food-related context. Elsewhere, both multisensory dining experiences and experiential events have also been reported to bring people to tears. There are, in other words, a number of extraordinary emotional responses that can or, in some cases, already have been linked to the consumption of food and drink. While such responses to auditory stimuli (increasingly mediated by technology) in the context of food are by no means widespread, they nevertheless hold the potential of delivering dramatic food and beverage experiences that offer the promise of being more stimulating, more memorable, and more emotionally-engaging than anything that has gone before.
... While there are particular, sensory-based foundations for aesthetic reactions to musical events (e.g., Terhardt, 1974) as well as conceptual foundations, the interplay between perceptual and conceptual factors can lead to "paradoxical" situations, in which, for example, the aesthetic appraisal of music does not match the sensory pleasurableness (Brattico, 2015). Moreover, sounds that are consistently judged as unpleasant, presumably due to acoustic features (e.g., fingernails on a chalkboard), are judged as less unpleasant when given an alternative conceptual framing, such as being a part of contemporary music (Reuter & Oehler, 2011). These findings similarly suggest that the framing of a particular sound can substantially alter the way in which it is aesthetically valued. ...
Article
People across the world seek out beautiful sounds in nature, such as a babbling brook or a nightingale song, for positive human experiences. However, it is unclear whether this positive aesthetic response is driven by a preference for the perceptual features typical of nature sounds versus a higher‐order association of nature with beauty. To test these hypotheses, participants provided aesthetic judgments for nature and urban soundscapes that varied on ease of recognition. Results demonstrated that the aesthetic preference for nature soundscapes was eliminated for the sounds hardest to recognize, and moreover the relationship between aesthetic ratings and several measured acoustic features significantly changed as a function of recognition. In a follow‐up experiment, requiring participants to classify these difficult‐to‐identify sounds into nature or urban categories resulted in a robust preference for nature sounds and a relationship between aesthetic ratings and our measured acoustic features that was more typical of easy‐to‐identify sounds. This pattern of results was replicated with computer‐generated artificial noises, which acoustically shared properties with the nature and urban soundscapes but by definition did not come from these environments. Taken together, these results support the conclusion that the recognition of a sound as either natural or urban dynamically organizes the relationship between aesthetic preference and perceptual features and that these preferences are not inherent to the acoustic features. Implications for nature's role in cognitive and affective restoration are discussed.
... Thus, semantic knowledge about the physical source of a sound may influence how we perceive the sound itself. For example, participants rated the psychoacoustics of chalkboard squeaking as worse when they knew the original source of the sound (chalkboard squeaks) as compared when they were told the sound was pulled from a modern musical composition (Reuter and Oehler, 2011). Cox (2008) conducted a study to examine whether concurrently presenting an image that is thematically related to the sound could affect how negatively the sounds were perceived. ...
Article
We propose that cross-sensory stimuli presenting a positive attributable source of an aversive sound can modulate negative reactions to the sound. In Experiment 1, participants rated original video sources (OVS) of eight aversive sounds (e.g., nails scratching a chalkboard) as more aversive than eight positive attributable video sources (PAVS) of those same sounds (e.g., someone playing a flute) when these videos were presented silently . In Experiment 2, new participants were presented with those eight aversive sounds in three blocks. In Blocks 1 and 3, the sounds were presented alone; in Block 2, four of the sounds were randomly presented concurrently with their corresponding OVS videos, and the other four with their corresponding PAVS videos. Participants rated each sound, presented with or without video, on three scales: discomfort , unpleasantness , and bodily sensations . We found the concurrent presentation of videos robustly modulates participants’ reactions to the sounds: compared to the sounds alone (Block 1), concurrent presentation of PAVS videos significantly reduced negative reactions to the sounds, and the concurrent presentation of OVS videos significantly increased negative reactions, across all three scales. These effects, however, did not linger into Block 3 when the sounds were presented alone again. Our results provide novel evidence that negative reactions to aversive sounds can be modulated through cross-sensory temporal syncing with a positive attributable video source. Although this research was conducted with a neurotypical population, we argue that our findings have implications for the treatment of misophonia.
... Further, sounds that don't express emotion can create an emotional reaction in a listener. Reuter and Oehler [9] found that the sound of fingernails on a blackboard led to increased sweating and skin conductance in listeners. Likewise, all sounds are first processed in the auditory cortex (superior temporal gyrus) [8], but particularly unpleasant sounds (e.g., knife on bottle) lead to more connected activation from the amygdala to the superior temporal gyrus, with the amygdala having "a central role in emotional phenomenology" [10]. ...
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Previous research has examined empathic concern by presenting toddlers with a sad stimulus and examining their emotional response, with the conclusion that toddlers display empathy. Yet, such research has failed to include basic control conditions involving some other aversive stimulus such as white noise. Nor has it compared toddlers to adults to examine potential development in empathy. In the present study, we showed toddlers and adults four video types: infant crying, infant laughing, infant babbling, and a neutral infant accompanied by white noise. We then coded happiness and sadness while viewing the videos, and created a difference score (happiness minus sadness), testing 52 toddlers and 61 adults. Whereas adults showed more sadness towards infant crying than any other stimulus, toddlers’ response to crying and white noise was similar. Thus, the toddler response to crying was comparable to previous studies (slight sadness), but was no different to white noise and was significantly reduced relative to adults. As such, toddlers’ response seemed to be better characterized as a reaction to an aversive stimulus rather than empathy.
... Im Falle der relativen dynamischen Bandbreite wurde diese Differenz anschließend durch den Median der rms-Energie normalisiert. · Als zusätzlicher experimenteller Deskriptor wurde die physiologische "Unangenehmheit" automatisieit für die vorliegenden Klänge eingeschätzt, wie sie vonReuterund Oehler in ihrer Studie zu Wandtafelkratzgeräuschen (Reuter & Oehler, 2011) untersucht wurde. Gemäß den klanglichen Faktoren, die sich für einen unangenehmen Eindruck als besonders ausschlaggebend erwiesen (ausgeprägte Tonhöhenanteile, insbesondere in Zusammenhang mit starken Frequenzanteilen zwischen 2000 und 4000 Hz) wurde ein entsprechender Deskriptor implementiert. ...
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Auf der Grundlage einer (psycho-)akustischen und musikalischen Analyse wer-den im vorliegenden Beitrag die typischen klanglichen Eigenschaften von 200 Audiologos ermittelt. Mithilfe der via MATLAB/MIRtoolbox ermittelten Er-gebnisse lassen sich hierbei die Audiologos in vielen Fällen allein schon auf-grundihrer klanglichen Eigenschaften bestimmten Branchen oder Industriezwei-gen zuordnen. Besonders am spektralen Schwerpunkt (Spectral Centroid) und am Einschwingvorgang lassen sich direkte Bezüge zwischen klanglicher Aus-gestaltung und Branchenzugehörigkeit feststellen. Mit anderen Worten: Vom Klang eines Audiologos lässt sich in vielen Fällen direkt auf seine Branchenzu-gehörigkeit schließen. Auf der Grundlage der vorliegenden Ergebnisse lassen sich somit direkte Vorgaben für ein branchencharakteristisches Sounddesign von neuen Audiologos erstellen. Abstract In the present study typical sound properties of 200 audio Iogos are determined by means of (psycho-)acoustical and musical analyses. While using the results of an audio feature analysis via MATLAB/MIRtoolbox most audio Iogos can be assigned to a specific sector or brauch of industry. The parameters spectral centroid and first attack time are especially suited to deterrnine correlations between sound properties and branches of industry. In other words: In many cases the sound of an audio logo can be connected directly to its industry affiliation. On that base the results of the study can be used in the field of audio branding to design characteristic and custornized audio Iogos for selected branches of industry.
... Furthermore, sounds that do not express emotion create an emotional reaction in a listener. In one study (18), the sound of fingernails on a blackboard led to increased sweating and skin conductance in listeners. And in another study (19), all sounds were found to be first processed in the auditory cortex (superior temporal gyrus), but particularly unpleasant sounds (e.g., a knife on a bottle) led to more connected activation from the amygdala to the superior temporal gyrus, with the amygdala having "a central role in emotional phenomenology" (20, p. 71). ...
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Several modern theories on the origins of human empathy and morality hold that empathic understanding is innate and use research on emotional contagion to support this claim. However, all studies on emotional contagion are limited and far from conclusive. In this article, we argue that the findings from these studies could be explained alternatively in terms of neonates responding to nonemotional acoustic features of the cries they hear rather than to the emotional distress the cries convey. We highlight several areas of concern in the literature and show how research findings on emotional contagion fit comfortably within the alternative framework of acoustic features. Beyond its implications for the literature on emotional contagion, the questions we raise have implications for theories on the origins of morality and empathic understanding. Given the recent proliferation of these theories, this highlights the need to examine with greater scrutiny the evidence that supports them, particularly studies on emotional contagion.
... Die rechnerische Analyse der klanglichen Merkmale via Matlab/MIRtoolbox und ergänzender Audio-Features [7], [8] lassen zwar i.d.R. genauere und objektivierbarere Unterscheidungs-kriterien und Zuordnungsmöglichkeiten zu. Auch die Darstellung des klanglichen Charakters der Markenklänge scheint durchaus nachvollziehbar zu sein. ...
... A reação do indivíduo misofônico dependerá do ambiente onde o som gatilho é apresentado, uma vez que as características físicas deste são secundárias; entretanto, a intensidade da reação do paciente com misofonia é parcialmente determinada pelas características físicas do som 7 . Em estudo realizado em 2011, foi percebido que as características acústicas relevantes dos sons desagradáveis podem ser encontradas na informação do pitch e numa área de frequência entre 2000 e 4000 Hz, na qual o ouvido humano é mais sensível 11 . ...
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p class="Normal1"> Introdução : a misofonia é uma condição crônica caracterizada por experiências emocionais desagradáveis em resposta a sons específicos. Existem poucos estudos que podem contribuir para o desenvolvimento de um modelo teórico para entender a misofonia e os fenômenos relativos a ela, bem como o seu tratamento. Objetivo: revisar a literatura sobre a misofonia e suas implicações, diagnóstico e possíveis tratamentos, numa perspectiva atual. Metodologia: foi realizada uma busca na literatura nas principais bases de dados online, utilizando o termo misofonia. Após análise dos resumos, 13 artigos foram selecionados para análise detalhada. Resultados: pouco ainda se sabe sobre os aspectos fisiopatológicos da misofonia e acredita-se que há um envolvimento dos sistemas límbico e autonômico na severidade das respostas aos chamados sons gatilhos. Os principais sons que desencadeiam respostas de aversão no indivíduo misofônico envolvem mastigação, respiração e outros sons de padrão repetitivo. Não há um consenso no melhor método diagnóstico desta condição e o tratamento também não segue uma padronização, podendo envolver terapia de habituação ao som, terapia cognitivo comportamental e utilização de medicamentos. Conclusão: a misofonia é uma condição que se mostra cada vez mais comum e que pode afetar muito a vida do indivíduo que a possui, no entanto, o entendimento sobre o mecanismo neurobiológico, os aspectos fisiopatológicos, a caracterização clínica, o diagnóstico e tratamento desse fenômeno ainda é evasivo.</p
... People who are averse to the word sometimes equate hearing "moist" to fingernails scratching a chalkboard. Experimental investigations of why people find fingernail screeches unpleasant suggest a similar tension between participants' subjective experience and the underlying cause of the unpleasant reaction, as people are more likely to find fingernail scratches aversive when they know they are hearing fingernail scratches per se (i.e., the same sound out of context is perceived as less unpleasant) [48][49][50][51]. ...
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Why do people self-report an aversion to words like "moist"? The present studies represent an initial scientific exploration into the phenomenon of word aversion by investigating its prevalence and cause. Results of five experiments indicate that about 10-20% of the population is averse to the word "moist." This population often speculates that phonological properties of the word are the cause of their displeasure. However, data from the current studies point to semantic features of the word-namely, associations with disgusting bodily functions-as a more prominent source of peoples' unpleasant experience. "Moist," for averse participants, was notable for its valence and personal use, rather than imagery or arousal-a finding that was confirmed by an experiment designed to induce an aversion to the word. Analyses of individual difference measures suggest that word aversion is more prevalent among younger, more educated, and more neurotic people, and is more commonly reported by females than males.
... In the former researches, we have already investigated that the noise including a spectral peak causes a strong discomfort [2]. In particular, it has also been reported that uncomfortable sound such as noise caused by scratching a blackboard, and a sound grinding a tooth has the spectral peaks between around 2 and 7 [kHz] in frequency domain [2,5]. ...
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In dental treatment, patients feel a strong discomfort feeling by the treatment sounds which arise by a tooth grinding. In order to add comfort to quality of life, we aim to reduce the discomfort feeling with dental treatment sounds. We previously proposed the unpleasantness reduction method based on auditory masking to reduce discomfort feeling of noise. The previously proposed method can reduce discomfort feeling by emitting a control signal to a listener, but we had focused on unpleasantness reduction to noise which has a peak frequency. Meanwhile, dental treatment sounds tend to consist of multiple spectral peaks. Therefore, in the present paper, we propose the design method of control signals for reducing discomfort feeling of dental treatment sounds which have multiple spectral peaks. More specifically, we detect the main spectral peaks, which bring a discomfort feeling, and design the control signal, which can mask these spectral peaks. Also, we employ the sound of running water as a source for the control signal. We carried out subjective evaluation experiments to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method. As a result of evaluation experiments, we confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Chapter
“We need to emotionalize our brand more.” This is the conclusion reached by a great many marketing managers in companies. Creative agencies have a long list of options, ideas, and strategies for this. But which one is really good? What role do emotions play in a buying decision? What exactly is an emotion and how does it work? Which emotions increase the motivation to buy in my target group? These and more questions are answered in this chapter.
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Mühlhans, J., Klooss, F., Reuter, C. (2021). Der Einfluss von Audiofeatures auf das Blickverhalten. In: Fortschritte der Akustik - DAGA 2021, 47. Deutsche Jahrestagung für Akustik (p. 324-327). Wien.
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Understanding ethnic differences in pain is important for addressing disparities in pain care. A common belief is that African Americans are hyposensitive to pain compared to Whites, but African Americans show increased pain sensitivity in clinical and laboratory settings. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying these differences are unknown. We studied an ethnicity- and gender-balanced sample of African Americans, Hispanics and non-Hispanic Whites using functional magnetic resonance imaging during thermal pain. Higher pain report in African Americans was mediated by discrimination and increased frontostriatal circuit activations associated with pain rating, discrimination, experimenter trust and extranociceptive aspects of pain elsewhere. In contrast, the neurologic pain signature, a neuromarker sensitive and specific to nociceptive pain, mediated painful heat effects on pain report largely similarly in African American and other groups. Findings identify a brain basis for higher pain in African Americans related to interpersonal context and extranociceptive central pain mechanisms and suggest that nociceptive pain processing may be similar across ethnicities. Losin et al. use neuroimaging to identify a brain mechanism underlying increased pain sensitivity in African Americans. This mechanism correlated with racial discrimination and implicated brain systems involved in context-based pain evaluation.
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„Wir müssen unsere Marke stärker emotionalisieren.“ Zu dieser Schlussfolgerung kommen sehr viele Marketingverantwortliche in Unternehmen. Kreativagenturen haben hierfür eine lange Liste an Möglichkeiten, Ideen und Strategien. Aber welche ist wirklich gut? Welche Rolle spielen Emotionen bei einer Kaufentscheidung? Was genau ist eine Emotion und wie funktioniert sie? Welche Emotionen steigern die Kaufmotivation bei meiner Zielgruppe? Diese und mehr Fragen werden in diesem Kapitel beantwortet.
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Brake-system dynamics still represents a key question for the understanding and quantification of self-excited vibrations in automotive applications. Conventionally, the dynamics of brake systems is analyzed by using complex eigenvalue analysis, which consists of linearizing the nonlinear equations of motion at a sliding state and solving the quadratic eigenvalue problem there. This method, however, only reproduces the local vibration behavior, tends to overestimate the number of instabilities, and its resulting complex eigenvectors do not provide amplitudes for the vibrations. Thus, in order to overcome these difficulties, alternative methods for the modeling, simulation, and analysis of friction-induced vibrations need to be addressed. In this contribution, as an alternative, a time-domain investigation of an industrial brake system based on elastic multibody systems is proposed. Moreover, since the occurrence of brake squeal is a highly parameter-dependent phenomenon, uncertainties are considered using fuzzy arithmetical methods.
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Klaus Schwarzfischer zeigt, wie wichtig es ist, mit dem einfachsten Fall einer ästhetischen Erfahrung zu beginnen. Die individuell-kognitiven Perspektiven und die sozial-kommunikativen Prozesse werden in einer einheitlichen Theorie analysierbar. Die Evolution wird dabei ebenso berücksichtigt wie neuro­biologische Aspekte. Interdisziplinär verständlich und ausführlich illustriert werden die Basis-Konzepte dargestellt. Schritt für Schritt nachvollziehbar werden auch komplexere Anwendungen entwickelt: Von der Gestalt zur Gestaltung. Was genau ist eine ästhetische Erfahrung? Welcher biologische Mechanismus liegt jeder ästhetischen Erfahrung zugrunde? Warum haben sich ästhetische Erfahrungen aus evolutionärer Perspektive durchgesetzt? Haben nur Menschen ästhetische Erfahrungen? Was ist der Gültigkeitsbereich ästhetischer Beobachtungen? (Was alles kann eine ästhetische Erfahrung auslösen?) Warum sind Destruktion und Provokation sowie Ironie und Humor auch ästhetische Phänomene? Wie können die „Gestalt-Gesetze“ als Symmetrien (d.h. als Invarianzen) interpretiert werden, um so mit Semiotik und Systemtheorie kompatibel zu werden?
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Objective: To explore the condition of misophonia, its definition, possible neurological correlates, its associated morbidity, its possible psychiatric relevance and potential treatment. Method: Provision of an illustrative case vignette and a review of the limited literature. Results: Misophonia is a symptom associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety disorders and may be a syndrome in itself associated with significant distress and avoidance. Treatments are not well validated. Conclusion: Misophonia may be an under-recognised condition of psychiatric relevance.
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