The Evolution of Soundscape Appraisal Through Enactive Cognition

Abstract

We propose a framework based on evolutionary principles and the theory of enactive cognition (“being by doing”), that addresses the foundation of key results and central questions of soundscape research. We hypothesize that the two main descriptors (measures of how people perceive the acoustic environment) of soundscape appraisal (‘pleasantness’ and ‘eventfulness’), reflect evolutionarily old motivational and affective systems that promote survival through preferences for certain environments and avoidance of others. Survival is aimed at ending or avoiding existential threats and protecting viability in a deficient environment. On the other hand, flourishing occurs whenever survival is not an immediate concern and aims to improve the agent’s viability and by co-creating ever better conditions for existence. As such, survival is experienced as unpleasant, and deals with immediate problems to be ended or avoided, while flourishing is enjoyable, and therefore to be aimed for and maintained. Therefore, the simplest, safety-relevant meaning attributable to soundscapes (audible safety) should be key to understanding soundscape appraisal. To strengthen this, we show that the auditory nervous system is intimately connected to the parts of our brains associated with arousal and emotions. Furthermore, our theory demonstrates that ‘complexity’ and ‘affordance content’ of the perceived environment are important underlying soundscape indicators (measures used to predict the value of a soundscape descriptor). Consideration of these indicators allows the same soundscape to be viewed from a second perspective; one driven more by meaning attribution characteristics than merely emotional appraisal. The synthesis of both perspectives of the same person–environment interaction thus consolidates the affective, informational, and even the activity related perspectives on soundscape appraisal. Furthermore, we hypothesize that our current habitats are not well matched to our, evolutionarily old, auditory warning systems, and that we consequently have difficulty establishing audible safety. This leads to more negative and aroused moods and emotions, with stress-related symptoms as a result.

Proposing a Framework for the Restorative Effects of Nature through Conditioning: Conditioned Restoration Theory

“…Similar innate preexisting connections could exist, for example a faster conditioning of relaxation and forests than condition relaxation and bedrooms. This is indirectly supported by research showing that visual perception evolved to perceive natural settings [ 52 ], humans can identify scenes before any objects in the scenes are identified [ 53 ], the auditory system is intimately connected to brain regions associated with core affect [ 54 ], as well as having remarkable statistical properties that were and are likely the bedrock for our perceptual system [ 55 ]. All this indicates that parallel processes actively tweaking the proposed conditioning could be present.…”

“…Conditioning a fear of snakes is easier than conditioning a fear of guns [ 50 ] and even activates evolutionary brain networks [ 99 ], as well as a cross-cultural preference for trees with a wide canopy width exists [ 100 ], suggesting innate conditions exist. Other theories also suggest innate mechanisms for restoration in nature exist, but focus on soundscape, arguing that the auditory system is not well matched to our current habitat, and thus fails in communicating safety [ 54 ]. This could also be a valid reason nature is more restorative than non-natural environments, but we argue that the two can also easily coexist, that nature is restorative both through soundscape appraisal and conditional mechanisms.…”

Music Listening as Coping Behavior: From Reactive Response to Sense-Making

“…A pair of soundscape dimensions called pleasantness and eventfulness has been proposed in this regard (e.g., [ 90 , 91 ]. This dimensionality is supported by an evolutionary theory [ 92 , 93 ] that states that the estimation of an environment as pleasant or unpleasant and the presence of many or few new events determines whether an environment is “rich” (pleasant and eventful), “dangerous” (unpleasant and eventful), “calming” (pleasant and uneventful), or “boring” (unpleasant and uneventful). These two dimensions reflect the basic dimensions of human mood, as expressed in earlier research [ 94 ] but the dimensionality of the soundscape may also be more complex in the sense that other concepts such as calming , protective , hectic , belonging , stability, and appropriateness have been proposed [ 95 , 96 ].…”

Natural Categorization: Electrophysiological Responses to Viewing Natural Versus Built Environments

“…Future research should also further address neural correlates with natural versus built environments using stimuli presented in modalities other than vision. Previous studies suggest that organisms may judge soundscape environments as pleasant based on perceived indicators of safety -though in contrast to the visual processing discussed above, this type of auditory processing is subcortical (e.g., Andringa and Lanser, 2013;van den Bosch et al, 2018). It would be interesting if across modality, findings converged to show that organisms more rapidly and easily categorize natural environments as safe and therefore also as more pleasant.…”

“…Natural environments can increase positive emotions (Roe et al, 2013) and creativity (Atchley et al, 2012), decrease stress (Ulrich, 1984;Mayer et al, 2009;MacKerron and Mourato, 2013;Hartig et al, 2014;Kuo, 2015;Von Lindern et al, 2017;Mennis et al, 2018), decrease impulsive decisionmaking (Berry et al, 2014;Berry et al, 2015), and are preferred over built images by adults (Kaplan et al, 1972;Meidenbauer et al, 2019). Natural environments can also improve working memory (Triguero-Mas et al, 2015) and attention (Hartig et al, 1991;Tennessen and Cimprich, 1995;Wells, 2000;Kuo and Faber Taylor, 2004;Berto, 2005;Berman et al, 2008;Mayer et al, 2009;Debener et al, 2012;Hartmann et al, 2013;Lee et al, 2015;Dadvand et al, 2017;Torquati et al, 2017;Ulset et al, 2017;Van Hedger et al, 2018;Stevenson et al, 2019).…”