The Psychophysiological Implications of Soundscape: A Systematic Review of Empirical Literature and a Research Agenda

Abstract

The soundscape is defined by the International Standard Organization (ISO) 12913-1 as the human’s perception of the acoustic environment, in context, accompanying physiological and psychological responses. Previous research is synthesized with studies designed to investigate soundscape at the ‘unconscious’ level in an effort to more specifically conceptualize biomarkers of the soundscape. This review aims firstly, to investigate the consistency of methodologies applied for the investigation of physiological aspects of soundscape; secondly, to underline the feasibility of physiological markers as biomarkers of soundscape; and finally, to explore the association between the physiological responses and the well-founded psychological components of the soundscape which are continually advancing. For this review, Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and PsycINFO were searched for peer-reviewed articles published in English with combinations of the keywords ‘soundscape’, ‘environmental noise/sound’, ‘physiology/physiological’, ‘psychology/psychological’, and ‘perceptual attributes/affective/subjective assessment/appraisals’. Previous research suggests that Electrocardiography (ECG) and Vectorcardiography (VCG) biometrics quantifying Heart Rate (HR), stimulus-locked experimental design, and passive listening with homogeneous populations are predominantly applied to characterize the psychophysiology underlying the soundscape. Pleasantness and arousal are the most frequent psychological descriptors for soundscape subjective appraisals. Likewise, acoustic environments are reported to inconsistently evoke physiological responses with great variability among studies. The link between the perceptual attributes and physiological responses of soundscape vary within and among existing literature. While a few studies detected a link between physiological manifestations of soundscape and the perceptual attributes, the others failed to validate this link. Additionally, the majority of the study findings were limited to one or two physiological responses.

Assessment Methods and Factors Determining Positive Indoor Soundscapes in Residential Buildings: A Systematic Review

“…Nevertheless, physiologic measures are not commonly used and neither included within soundscape data collection methods by ISO 12913-2 standard. Previous research revealed the importance in coupling the objective and subjective assessments of the acoustic environment with the recording of objective physiological responses [54][55][56], as this helps in better understanding the relationship between the physical acoustic environment and people´s perceptual and behavioral response to it. Physiological measurements should thus be included within soundscape assessment practices and further research efforts would be needed to investigate the association between sound stimuli, physiological responses, subjective assessments and behavioral reactions in the peculiar case of indoor environments.…”

“…Higher NO2 exposure was related to an increased likelihood to report high noise annoyance, but the impact depended on traffic noise level, thus suggesting an interaction effect. In detail, the effect of NO2 resulted stronger in people exposed to low levels of noise (DNL ≤ 45 dBA) than in people exposed to medium noise levels (55)(56)(57)(58)(59)(60)(61)(62)(63)(64)(65). As a result, the authors suggest that a multiplier reduction in noise annoyance can be achieved through a simultaneous reduction of NO2 levels and noise levels [35].…”

Promoting Healthy and Supportive Acoustic Environments: Going beyond the Quietness

“…A better understanding of contextual factors and aspects related to the interactions between people and places is required to characterize soundscapes holistically, as pointed out by Hermida and colleagues [16] in their case studies in Lisbon and Bogotá. For this purpose, it is certainly useful to review the corpus of literature looking at the positive effects that soundscapes and environmental sounds more generally can have on people's quality of life and well-being [17,18].…”

The Relationship between Different Types of Alarm Sounds and Children’s Perceived Risk Based on Their Physiological Responses

“…The above physiological indicators have been widely used in research on risk perception and health in recent years, and have been shown to be able to sensitively reflect the physiological changes of individuals under stress. Because the alarm sound can be seen as a stress stimulus causing stress in the body or changes in the arousal level of the listener [38,39], and both EDA and heart rate are physiological indicators that rapidly respond to physiological arousal and stress stimuli [40][41][42], the mean SC score and heart rate would increase significantly under virtual stress stimulation, which are effective indicators of physiological response under stress stimulation [43]. SCL and SCR are also used to measure risk perception [44].…”