A mathematical approach to correlating objective spectro-temporal features of environmental sounds with their subjective perceptions

Abstract

Many studies on the subjective perception of non-linguistic sounds have focused on only a single percept, e.g. pleasantness. In the present study, we have examined three different perception-related factors to also allow us to look at any inter-relationships between them that could be related to objective features. Objective features of the NLSs in this database were calculated and subjective perceptions were recorded from participants. These two elements -objective features and subjective perceptions -were then mapped together using various statistical and mathematical techniques. So as to ground our results in a meaningful context, we chose to map a set of objective features to human percepts which had been used in previous studies of NLS perception, but which had not yet been related back to objective features or combinations thereof.

A Mathematical Approach to Correlating Objective Spectro-Temporal Features of Non-linguistic Sounds With Their Subjective Perceptions in Humans

“…We would like to thank Fahad Rahman who helped collect the psychophysical data used for the analysis of this manuscript. An earlier version of this manuscript was released as a pre-print at bioRxiv (Burns and Rajan, 2016).…”