Influence of listener task on ratings of pleasantness for everyday sounds
Abstract
Objective: To develop a method to investigate the influence of subject task on the evaluation of sound stimuli. The method is for use in future hearing aid experiments. Method: Twenty listeners with normal hearing rated real-life sound stimuli under different conditions. The sound stimuli were binaurally-recorded soundscapes with low-level target sounds mixed in. The conditions were: 1. Listening only to sound stimuli without any other tasks. This condition is similar to the method used in typical hearing aid studies. 2. An ‘auditory detection’ paradigm, where listeners detect low-level target sounds (e.g. a microwave beep) within the sound stimuli. 3. The ‘irrelevant sound’ paradigm, where listeners perform cognitive tasks (e.g. simple addition of numbers), while the sound stimuli are presented. After listening to each sound stimulus under these three conditions, listeners rated the pleasantness of the sound stimulus. Results and Conclusions: Ratings of auditory pleasantness were lower under the irrelevant sound condition and under the auditory detection condition than in the listening only condition. However, there was a large degree of variability associated with the ratings, which reduces the sensitivity of the method for use of evaluating hearing aid settings.
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