Re: sex differences in perception of environmental sounds

["Bruno L. Giordano" <bruno.giordano@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Guillaume et al.,

> All our sounds were "sound of objects", so we had nothing like baby 
> crying. And, in my opinion, environmental sounds do not include human 
> vocalizations. Personally, I always use Vanderveer's definition [2]:
> "... any possible audible acoustic event which is caused by motions in 
> the ordinary human environment. (...) Besides 1) having real events as 
> their sources (...) 2) [they] are usually more ``complex'' than 
> laboratory sinusoids, (...) 3) [they] are meaningful, in the sense that 
> they specify events in the environment. (...) 4) The sounds to be 
> considered are not part of a communication system, or communication 
> sounds, they are taken in their literal rather than signal or symbolic 
> interpretation."

In my personal opinion we shouldn't use such a restrictive definition of 
environmental sounds. Your definition (and that of Vanderveer) 
corresponds approximately to the category of nonliving environmental sounds.

Research on environmental sounds is a precious opportunity to finally 
direct the attention of the research community towards the complexity of 
the everyday acoustical environment. If we constraint the definition of 
environmental sounds we constrain the research field and miss this 
opportunity.

For the comparative weight of symbolic and sensory(acoustical) 
information in the cognitive processing of different categories of 
environmental sounds see Giordano et al. (2010): with baby cries 
symbolic information seems to be more relevant than with "hammering 
nail" (surprise surprise). Again, in my opinion and I assume in that of 
several other researchers in this field, baby cries are nonetheless 
environmental sounds.

	Bruno


@ARTICLE{giordano10BCG,
  author = {B. L. Giordano and J. McDonnell and S. McAdams},
  title = {Hearing living symbols and nonliving icons: 
category-specificities in the cognitive processing of environmental sounds},
  journal = {Brain \& Cognition},
  year = {2010},
  volume = {73},
  pages = {7-19}
}


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bruno L. Giordano, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
CIRMMT – Schulich School of Music
555 Sherbrooke Street West
Montréal, QC H3A1E3
Canada
+1 514 398 4535, Ext. 00900 (office)
+1 514 398 2962 (fax)
http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~bruno/