Influence of soundscape and interior design on anxiety and perceived tranquillity of patients in a healthcare setting

Abstract

Tranquillity characterised by a pleasant but calming environment is often to be found in natural environments where man-made noise is at a low level though natural sounds can be relatively high. Numerous studies have shown a link between such restorative environments and hospital recovery rates, stress reduction, longevity, pain relief and even how the brain processes auditory signals. In hospitals and primary care facilities there is a need to improve patient waiting rooms as current designs are largely based solely on medical need. There are often long waits in such spaces and patients are coping with the stress and anxiety caused by their medical condition. Attention should therefore be given to creating "restorative environment" as a component to their medical treatment. The study describes the effects of introducing natural sounds and large images of natural landscapes into a waiting room in a student health centre. Using self reported levels of anxiety and tranquillity it was possible to assess the impact that these targeted auditory and visual interventions had in affecting the quality of the patient experience. Following the changes results show that levels of reported tranquillity were signicantly improved but there were smaller change in reported reductions in anxiety.

Auditory sensory saliency as a better predictor of change than sound amplitude in pleasantness assessment of reproduced urban soundscapes

“…To test the hypothesis that the saliency of the sound as determined by the saliency model is indeed a predictor of changes in pleasantness, the Aweighted sound pressure amplitude, a common indicator used in soundscape studies [19,20,21], was also calculated. The prediction between the signals was then evaluated using a Granger causality analysis with a unidirectional causality constraint.…”

“…The extraction of the sound pressure signal started from the monaural signal which was firstly weighted with an A-weighting digital filter. The A-weighting was chosen as it is a standardized modification of the sound signal based on human perception that is used extensively in environmental noise and soundscape studies [19,20,21].…”

The effects of “greening” urban areas on the perceptions of tranquillity

“…Preliminary studies into this aspect that was informed by TRAPT have been completed in a health care facility where the aim was to improve levels of tranquility, relaxation and anxiety in a waiting room. Significant benefits were achieved by replacing a radio playing popular music with recordings of natural sounds (small waves breaking on a shingle beach) and by using the large notice boards to display high quality nature scenes (coastal scenes, views of lake with mountains beyond and park with an abundance of spring flowers) [26]. Further studies are being considered for other health care facilities and office environments.…”

A grounded theory approach to investigate the perceived soundscape of open-plan offices

“…Some of the researchers used the soundwalk method to investigate the urban soundscapes [12,[19][20][21], while various others used binaural recordings and psychoacoustic measurements [18,22,23]. More subjective evaluations of soundscape consists of analysing questionnaires, interviews, semantic differential scales [6,12,19,21,[24][25][26]. Indoor soundscape on the other hand, not only lack a well-accepted evaluation method but also greatly lack case studies.…”