Cognition of soundscapes and other complex acoustic scenes

Davies, WJ

Abstract

The fields of soundscapes, music cognition and audio quality have many similarities. Researchers in these areas are all dealing with perception and cognition of complex acoustic scenes. To date, there has been little cross-fertilisation between them. This paper examines some key concepts and results from soundscapes, music and audio. It is shown that perceptual dimensions, categories, and figure/ground play important roles in all three areas. The concept of the scale of the cognitive structure is introduced, building on results in music cognition. Scale refers to the way we can attend to the soundscape as a whole, or zoom in to a sound within it, or further in to a component or feature of that sound. It is suggested that scale links the models of perceptual dimensions, categories and auditory objects. The idea of scale is further used to suggest why the attention mechanism is so important in complex scenes, and why the concept of listening modes may be more simply explained as the consequences of attention. The paper concludes by speculating on the inherent cognitive apparatus applied to all complex scenes and suggests fruitful avenues for future research.

Citation

Davies, W. (2015, August). Cognition of soundscapes and other complex acoustic scenes. Presented at Internoise 2015, San Francisco

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Internoise 2015
• Conference Location: San Francisco
• Start Date: Aug 9, 2015
• End Date: Aug 12, 2015
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Sep 1, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2016
• Book Title: 44th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering (Internoise 2015): Implementing Noise Control Technology
• ISBN: 9781510810822
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference