Cristina Menchaca, 2007-49018

Size Matters.

No, I’m not referring to boy talk in locker rooms, nor am I talking about the hardships of being vertically challenged. Size matters when it comes to hearing. Size of a person? Size of the person’s eardrum? No, this is about room size. Room size affects how much of a sound we hear, sure. But it actually also affects the way we emotionally react to the sounds themselves. If you’re a psych major or are affiliated with psychology or a similar course, then yes, this is one of those times for you to be reminded that context or the environment is never to be forgotten in any situation! When it comes to emotionally evaluating a sound, room size matters.

Spatial context always affects our perception, cognition and emotion, no matter how small or everyday the situation may be. Hold everything else constant except the type of surrounding and you will find that there is always different experience. The study on how the perception of room size and source of sound affects emotional responses is seriously recent. It was just this 2010 when Tajadura-Jimenez et al published their study ‘When Room Size Matters: Acoustic Influences on Emotional Responses to Sounds’ in the journal Emotion. To what extent does the perception of auditory space influence one’s emotional response to a sound? The study measured this subjectively (through self-reports and arousal ratings of participants after hearing a sound) and physiologically (through electrodermal activity and facial electromyography recordings of participants while hearing the sounds).

Before going on, let me butt in. Should you be someone else aside from my teacher and for some reason, are actually reading this, then for your convenience, I put headings before each paragraph, so you can skip around to read the parts that actually interest you.

Details of the study:

Twenty participants (mean age 30, age range 21-66, 8 of which were women), all with normal hearing and unaware of the purpose of the experiment, took part in the study. The study made use of four factors: sound type (natural animal sound, natural human sound, artificial continuous sound, artificial discontinuous sound), emotion evoked by the sound (neutral or negative), room size (big, outdoor, small), and sound source position (front or back). Participants were made to go through all of the 48 different set-ups. Volume, duration, and distance of the sound from the participant were all controlled.

What did they find out?

As was mentioned earlier, the response to sounds depends on the meaning attributed to the sound, but sound source and situational context play an important part. Hearing the same sound can elicit different responses depending on where the sound is coming from and where the person is. What were the results of the study? In general, sounds are considered more arousing and unpleasant in big rooms than in small rooms. Likewise, people feel safer in small rooms than in bigger ones. This makes sense because it is easier to take note of things of in a smaller and more intimate setting, thus a ‘safer’ one. The difference between room size disappears though when sound is unpleasant- at this point, room size did not matter. As opposed to their findings, the researchers predicted that unpleasant events would be perceived as more negative when in reduced spaces (a small room). This has basis even in evolution, in that people in bigger areas have more space to evade danger than in small ones. Well I personally think the results make sense. If I heard any sound that would cause me to panic out of fear, it wouldn’t matter to me if I was in a small room or a big one- I’d panic either way.

The results of the study also showed that when it comes to source of the sound, sources perceived behind the listener are considered more arousing. This finding was as hypothesized because of the finding that when no visual cues are available, people tend to locate their sources at their back. This too makes sense to me because we heavily rely on eyesight, so it makes sense that when we can’t detect a sound from our peripheral vision, there’s a heightened arousal. The effect of the source of sound is more pronounced for natural sounds, and this makes sense because as was mentioned in the study, we are more tuned to detect natural sounds than artificial ones.

So what’s so great about this study?

What makes the study interesting to me is the fact that it tried to see something new: how emotional response is affected by acoustic influences, instead of the typical studies on how acoustic influences affect how much sound is perceived. I also found it cool that the researchers draped the settings with black cloth (even the ceilings except for the outdoors setting) so that size of the room would be based not on sight but on the sense of hearing (blindfold a person and he or she can estimate the size of the room based on the sound reflected by the walls of the room). I found the study well-prepared, considering meaning of sound was taken into consideration by using natural and artificial sounds, and because a manipulation check was also made before the experiment. Participants went through the different set-ups randomly, rating the safeness of the sounds and estimated room size using a scale. In this way, they were able to ensure that the sounds and room sizes chosen were successfully manipulated, even if they were taken from other studies. Now that I think about it, I can probably link this study to one of our recently discussed topics in class, the difference threshold. How? Well in a way, although there was so standard stimulus, the participants did have to determine the difference among room sizes. They could not see the rooms they were in and so had to base their decisions on the reflected sounds, but had to say which room it was: small, medium (outdoor) or big. They had to have that knack in determining a difference among the three set-ups based only on their auditory sense, which they all did successfully.

My personal recommendations:

Different variations of the study can be made to find out more than what was already found. Would the volume of the sound make a difference? How about accompanying the sound with other kinds of noise, so that the situation is more realistic, would that make a difference? How about the presence of people, would emotional reaction differ if the receiver was alone or with others? How about if positive sounds were included, would there be higher arousal if the source is visible/ from the front?

Spot the limitations:

I appreciate that the study was well thought out. There were four factors, each with different variables. However, I find that the study is limited by the sounds themselves (because they were only few, half of which were natural, and half of the natural were non-human), and by the sample. Note that although the researchers made sure all participants had the same hearing quality, there were only 20 of them. It’s not safe to generalize that to the rest of the world, more so assuming that the 20 participants are of the same culture or at least the same region.

My last words:

So I just sounded like I was going to die with that heading, but let me go on with how this study can be applied. For one thing, movie theater companies have nothing to worry about because their audio system, being surround sound, not just comes from behind the audience but even the sides. Perhaps the findings of this study can be of use at home or in smaller places. High tech stereo systems are advertised to beautifully decorate the TV, but should people want a higher level of arousal from their sound systems, they may want to put their speakers behind where they sit. I can’t say this could be recommended to teachers too, that they stay behind their students when giving lectures, but this will probably make their students pay more attention not just because the sound is coming from behind but also because students are aware that they can’t turn around while their teachers can see whatever they’re doing. It’s no surprise that room size does not matter when sounds are negative, or that sounds behind people are more arousing. When watching horror movies with friends in a living room or walking with friends in a scary place at night after all, everyone’s still scared, and no one wants to be at the back, where there’s no protection from being the first to be taken or killed should a warning sound be heard. And considering smaller rooms are more pleasant, no wonder it is preferred that even classes be handled in small rooms than in big auditoriums. Of course, the findings of this study can’t be generalized. It still has limitations and can still expound on related studies. For now, it’s still interesting to know, at least for me, that room size and speaker source actually has an effect not on volume of a sound but on the emotion we get from it.

Source:
Tajadura-Jimenez, A., Larsson, P., Valjamae, A., Vastfjall, D., & Kleiner, M. (2010). When room size matters: acoustic influences on emotional responses to sounds. Emotion, 10(3), 416-422.