Psychoacoustic correlates of individual noise sensitivity.
In environmental noise surveys, self-reported noise sensitivity, a stable personality trait covering attitudes toward a wide range of environmental sounds, is a major predictor of individual noise-annoyance reactions. Its relationship to basic measures of auditory functioning, however, has not been systematically explored. Therefore, in the present investigation, a sample of 61 unselected listeners was subjected to a battery of psychoacoustic procedures ranging from threshold determinations to loudness scaling tasks. No significant differences in absolute thresholds, intensity discrimination, simple auditory reaction time, or power-function exponents for loudness emerged, when the sample was split along the median into two groups of "low" vs "high" noise sensitivity on the basis of scores obtained from a psychometrically evaluated questionnaire [Zimmer and Ellermeier, Diagnostica 44, 11-20 (1998)]. Small, but systematic differences were found in verbal loudness estimates, and in ratings of the unpleasantness of natural sounds, thus suggesting that self-reported noise sensitivity captures evaluative rather than sensory aspects of auditory processing.
Ellermeier
W
W
Institut für Psychologie, Universität Regensburg, Germany. wolfgang.ellermeier@psychologie.uni-regensburg.de
Eigenstetter
M
M
Zimmer
K
K
D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects*; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D011930:Reaction Time; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires