Hearing but not listening: Auditory icons and presence

Abstract

This paper explores the usage of auditory icons in creating the feeling of presence of a remote person in a virtual simulation of domestic life. Auditory icons are the representation of processes or activities using everyday sounds. Presence is defined in this research as 'the feeling of being with others'. In this research, domestic life is simulated using the game called The Sims. Participants were asked to play the game while being able to hear auditory icons that represent another player who were playing the game in a remote place. In actuality the auditory icons is just a sound loop. A presence questionnaire given to 49 users participating in 2 research trials shows that auditory icons can easily be ignored and thus do not induce a high level of social presence, but when the auditory icons are given attention to, social presence is significantly increased. The results from the trials are also discussed from the perspective of Acoustic Communication Theory, which shows that as the auditory environment becomes saturated with sound objects, people tend to be 'distracted listeners'. At the time of writing more experiments are being done to study the effects of auditory icons on presence.

Could You Evaluate Sounds in a Virtual Environment? Evaluation Components of Auditory Experience in a Metaverse Environment

“…The factors of 'the spatial characteristics of sound' [14], 'spatialized sound' [43], 'spatialized sound source' [44], and binary audio (spatial acoustics) [45] were grouped into 'implementing the spatial properties of sound' because they use the common concept of 'space' according to P1's opinion. 'Similarity to real-world sounds [34], 'realization of real sounds' [39], 'reproduction of soundscapes' [40], and 'everyday soundscapes' [41] were grouped as 'implementing realistic soundscapes in a metaverse environment' because they use the common auditory concept of 'real soundscapes' according to P1's opinion. 'Perceived location factor of sound' [22], threedimensional spatial representation of sound [39], and 'three-dimensional representation of sound' [42] were grouped into 'three-dimensional perception of sound' because they use the common concept of 'location' according to P2's opinion.…”

“…Based on these results, it was identified that five main components, including 'realistic auditory background' and 'acoustic aesthetics', explained more than 70% of the variance in auditory presence in metaverse environments. While previous studies have mainly focused on the spatial characteristics of auditory presence in metaverse environments or the congruence of auditory and visual atmospheres [36][37][38][39][40][41][42], the study focuses on the importance of AUX and its impact on presence. As expected from the above research questions, it was confirmed that auditory presence and AUX factors can enhance presence when they act complementarily.…”

“…In addition to the implementation of acoustic technologies such as soundscapes that embody real-world sounds [39][40][41][42][43][44], studies on the quality of sound sources [39,44], studies on the stereophonics of sounds [39,44], studies on the spatial characteristics of sounds [43][44][45], studies on auditory cues that help with navigation tasks [44], and studies on auditory factors that match visuals [40,42] and factors such as coherence between sounds [14] have been identified as influencing the sense of presence. Table 3 shows research examples of the auditory presence evaluation factors in metaverse environments identified by researchers.…”

“…In the case of 'spatial acoustics', some studies classified presence as presence [39,43,44], while others classified presence as immersion [42], presence [44], and social presence [45]. Studies on 'soundscapes' classify presence as presence [40] and social presence [41], and studies on 'auditory factors related to visual experience' classify presence as presence [40] and presence and immersion [42]. In other words, auditory presence factors have not yet been systematically organized as they were classified differently by different researchers.…”