The Role of the Iconicity of Sound Within the Multisensory Environment

The iconicity of perceived content includes all associative aspects that are intuitively attributed to the stimuli. Sound thus communicates information on the nature of its source. Associative content is essential for the fit of specific sounds in the total background and in the whole multisensory environment. Psychoacoustic parameters of sound contribute to the overall perceptual appearance of auditory elements, but iconicity and semantic content are determining the meaning of sound, which is most important to the listener. An objective iconicity analysis is introduced for the assessment of multisensory aspects of an environment. It is configured for the intuitive selection of appropriate images from a large dataset. In contrast to the common procedure of image-based soundscape analysis, the pictures refer to perceived single aspects, features of materials touched, functional aspects of processes, and emotions. It has successfully been applied to visual and tactile stimuli. Its expected benefit for sound evaluations is discussed.