Acoustics/Sound

Buckley found that different birdsongs have different effects on our mental health.  Buckley reports that “Mental health benefits of birdsong differ between bird species. . . . Benefits of birdsong for mental health provide an economic argument for conservation of bird species, assemblages and habitats; but we need to quantify the benefits of bird diversity, and of rare relative to abundant bird species. . . .  the benefits of birdsong may depend on particular bird species, e.g. since songs bring memories or emotions. . . . birdsong is not a single homogeneous parameter.”

Hammoud and colleagues identified positive consequences of seeing or hearing birds.  They report that they “used the Urban Mind smartphone application to examine the impact of seeing or hearing birds on self-reported mental wellbeing in real-life contexts. . . . Everyday encounters with birdlife were associated with time-lasting improvements in mental wellbeing. These improvements were evident not only in healthy people but also in those with a diagnosis of depression, the most common mental illness across the world. . . . results . . .

Research by Huang and colleagues indicates serious negative effects of hearing traffic noise, which supports adding soundproofing materials to walls.  The team shares that “Road traffic noise was estimated at baseline residential address using the common noise assessment method model. Incident hypertension was ascertained through linkage with medical records. . . .

Laplace and Guastavino studied acoustics in churches. They found that “sound [in churches] acquires ‘a life of its own,’ abstracted from the sound sources, unlike other everyday listening situations where sounds are experienced as pointers to object or agents who produce sound. . . . Church acoustics can also reinforce the impression that sounds are detached from their sources. Sound phenomena acquire a form of agency to directly affect participants’ perceptions, reflections and mood, placing them in a world of its own where time passes more slowly and space functions differently.”

Ayoko and teammates reviewed how office noise influences employee mood (affect), which is particularly important because more positive moods enhance cognitive performance, getting along with other people, wellbeing, and health.  The research team reports that data collected in an open office showed that higher levels of perceived office noise were linked to more negative moods, and those more negative moods could in turn be tied to greater employee withdrawal and task conflict as well as to people trying to mark their physical territories: “Specifically, we found that, as perceived open-pla

Lee and colleagues studied satisfaction with speech privacy in workplaces via a survey. They share that “workers should be allowed to choose a workspace where they can focus on their job by creating a suitable space to concentrate. While it is important to create separate spaces for different purposes, it is essential to consider the provision of an isolated space by modifying workstations, which represent the smallest domain for workers from the perspective of spatial design, or by adjusting partition heights.

Puligadda and VanBergen studied acoustic logos.  The research team found that “The instrument used to play a brand’s sound logo influences perceived brand personality. . . . A sound logo's instrument and a visual logo's design can have similarly strong influences on brand personality perceptions. . . . One attribute of auditory information is timbre, which describes the identity of a sound source (an instrument, voices, etc.).