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How do blind people perceive sound and soundscape?

Article  in  Akustika · January 2015

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 How do Blind People Perceive Sound and Soundscape?
Monika Rychtáriková

STU Bratislava, Stavebná fakulta, KKPS, Radlinského 11, 81368, Bratislava, Slovakia,
KU Leuven, Lab of Acoustics, Celestijnenlaan 200 D, 3001, Heverlee, Belgium
Monika.Rychtarikova@stuba.sk

Abstract
The meaning of sound in human life is incalculable, thought its importance in nowadays
society is often underestimated. Without any doubt, the modern western culture is more
visually oriented and therefore grasping of the information from the environment created by
sound, so called “Soundscape”, is less prominent. However, for people with visual handicap
who cannot use visual cues for their orientation in building interior and urban areas and
cannot read the facial expression of people they communicate with, is hearing really crucial
vital function. This article summarizes the most important features in perception of
sound(scape) by visually challenged people and brings the knowledge by other means than
formulas and numbers. This information carries a strong potential that could be used by
architects and urban planners when designing buildings or urban public places according to
inclusive design principles.

Introduction Hearing and listening

The human capacity to experience
different stimuli, such as taste, smell,
touch, temperature, intensity and colour of
light, or a colour of sound is quite
remarkable. Furthermore, all these abilities
are integrated by the neural system,
resulting in a multisensory perception
(known also as multimodal integration),
which enhances the understanding of the
environment as such.
The fact that human perception works on
multisensory bases makes it difficult to
grasp information about one discrete vital
function (such as sight, hearing, touch,
smell or taste) in the daily life of a person.
Interviews and testimonies of people with
certain handicap, such as blindness or
deafness help in this respect to understand
the subjective perception and reaction of
the person to building or urban
environment if one of the vital functions is
not in function. Laboratory experiments
help on the other hand in following of one
particular feature of perception.
Hearing is the one of the five senses of
human being and it is also the first one that
is developed in human body, typically
already 12th week after conception, when
the human foetus has already the capacity
to perceive some sound vibrations [1].
Once person is born and outher, middle
and inner ear is formed, hearing can be
described as a physiological proces in
which sound waves enter the ear canal, hit
the eardrum and cause it to vibrate. Sound
is then transmitted through the ossicles to
the inner ear where the vibrations of stirrup
set the fluid in cochlea into motion and the
alternating changes of pressure make the
basilar membrane with Corti apparatus,
moving the hair cells. Once the sensory
hair cells are stimulated, impulses are sent
through the auditory nerve into the brain
for processing.
Hearing in adults is typical by its very high
sensitivity in both frequency and intensity,
which is paradoxically larger than in case
of the sight.
Normally hearing and seeing people are
able to distinguish around 1300 tones but
only around 150 hues of colours. The
ability to hear not only separate tones but
also sound intervals, such as quarts, quints
or octaves, and accords (used for instance
in music) makes hearing very unique.
Another interesting feature of hearing is its
omnidirectional character. We cannot close
our ears alike our eyes and we are able to
hear also sound sources, which might be
situated behind or above us, thus without
seeing them. And we not only hear them
but we can also localise them by using
binaural and monaural cues.
Hearing as a physiological process is only
a passive action, result of our auditory
system. Hearing apparatus is also very
similar from person to person. Still, we
have our preferences in music styles or
abilities in understanding languages. It is
thanks to a cognitive process called
listening that follows the path in the brain
once the auditive information has arrived.
Listening is thus an active action that
requires our cognition and can be
conscious or subconscious, concrete or
abstract, intuitive or conceptual. Typical
for the cognitive processes is the use of
existing knowledge that leads to a new
knowledge. In relation to Sound and
Soundscape investigations, acoustical
memory significantly affects our
judgements and emotions too [2].
Soundscape
Environment created by sound, so called
„Soundscape“, belongs to the meaningful
features of human life. Soundscape is
constituted in dalily encounters between
listeners and sounds that surround them.
Therefore, to be able to study the
soundscape of a certain place we need to
consider the acoustical environment and its
social perception at the same time.
Soundscape assessment methods typically
use qualitative and synthetic approach,
similar to music evaluation. Application
of this knowledge into the design is
therefore very different in comparison with
analytic engineering approaches in room
acoustics or noise control [3].
Soundscape studies became during the last
decade very popular thanks to a better
understanding between architects and
acousticians For overview see [4].
However, only very limited attention is
given to perception of people with diverse
sensory abilities. Forgetting these
inhabitants of buildings and cities makes
many nice places due to too much noise or
reverberation for them acoustically not-
accessible and so not acceptable.
This article brings a literature overview on
different topics (acoustics, medicine, and
inclusive design) related to perception of
the sound(scape) by blind people.
Brain Plasticity and Sound perception
Although blind people have the same
hearing apparatus as sighted ones, they are
typically able to process the acoustic
information better [5]. This is happening
not only thanks to a better concentration on
sound stimuli, but it has also a
physiological reason. Plasticity of brain
helps to people with visual impairment to
develop extra abilities in processing of
auditory cues [5,6,7,8].
Blind adults perform better than sighted
mainly in case of perceptual tasks such as
pitch change determination, spatial
orientation verbal memory and speech
discrimination or sound localisation [5,6].
Many aspects have influence on
exploration of the potential of sound. One
of the strongest factor is probably the age
at which a person looses his/her sight,
because the early-onset blind have
different reorganization of the neuronal
population and alternatively might use the
visual centers of the brain for processing of
sound [6,7,8].
Those humans, who became blind at early
age are able to localize sounds also
monaurally, while normally sighted adults
need a binaural information (eg. two
healthy ears) using Interaural Time
differences and Interaural level differences
[9]. Finding the limit of the maximal age
for plasticity of the occipital cortex is
matter of the ongoing research [10]
Indication based on MRI scan are 14-15
years [10,11] PET imaging shows changes
also for older children [12,13].
Acoustic orientation
Another striking ability of people with
visual impairment is a phenomenon called
“echolocation”, that is based on using of
the self emitted sounds, typically “tongue
click” (sound with a high intensity, short
duration and broad frequency spectrum) to
localise or identify objects or environments
[14,15,16]. It is however not clear yet how
the echolocation really works. Some blind
people describe this phenomenon by sense
of touch through facial vision or special
feeling at teeth and lips.
Echolocation is working very well in
detection of buildings, walls, and large
obstacles. Blind skiers reported that they
can “hear” where the building in de
surrounding is, and out of which building
material it is built. And although large
elements are logically easier to be detected,
few blind people are able to detect even
very small elements of 10 cm, if presented
under special laboratory conditions such as
aluminium profiles in anechoic room. To
learn the echolocation, certain time is
required and in some countries already
teacher, so called “echolocators” exist.
As already mentioned above, perception of
humans is based on multisensory way and
in a real life it is difficult to discriminate
the acoustic information that is used for
orientation. Blind people report, that they
can hear “the end” of the block of houses,
however, this detection could be a result of
a combination of different cues as well,
such as feeling the air movements or
temperature changes.
Perception of Music and Speech
When listening to music or a talking
person, sighted human is accompanied by
a visual feedback in which he/she sees a
playing musician or a speaking person.
First of all, seeing the musician or speaker
supplies us with an extra feedback on
“who is talking or playing” and moreover,
the movements of musician or facial
expression of a talking person are without
any doubt very important factors in better
understanding of “how things were said”
or played. Blind person misses the part of
the non-verbal information essential in
understanding the real meaning of words,
or accompanied emotions that is normally
partially transmitted also through visual
cues and he/she must rely on purely
acoustic information, such as an intonation
in the voice of the speaker.
The colour of the voice usually offers
essential information to recognize the
speaking person but some training and
extra concentration is necessary. As
reported by [17]: “the spoken words are
often too abstract and touch too concrete”.
From medical point of view, measurements
of brain responses to voice and non-voice
stimuli in blind and sighted people based
on MRI scan shows different patterns of
brain activation between the two groups.
Non-sighted people have shown stronger
activation of occipital area and weaker
activation of temporal areas. However, it
is not completely clear yet, if the
differences seen in brain might result in
superior ability in auditory perception [18].
Perception of Outdoor Soundscape
It seems that sounds of nature and weather
play crutial role in perception of building
exterior in particular. Sunny day without
wind is not always perceived in positive
way, as there are no reflections of sound
from surrounded objects. Rain in contrary
helps in highlighting the landscape and
turning the “fragmented” world of a non-
sighted person into a continuous acoustical
experience. “The rain presents the fullness
of entire situation all at once, not merely
remembered, not in anticipation, but
actually and now. The rain gives a sense
of perspective and of the actual
relationship of one part of the world to
another” [19].
Thunder is also perceived as a very
positive element of nature, because it gives
to a blind person a sense of space and
shows the distance between objects:
“Thunder puts a roof over my head, a very
high, vaulted ceiling of rumbling sound. I
realize that I am in a big place, whereas
before there was nothing there at all.”,
or: “I love thunder because it prevents me
from wandering in infinity, which is
frightening and disorientating.” [19]
Perception of Indoor Soundscape
When being in the building interior, most
of the blind persons prefer to hear some
sounds. Sound of the known sound source,
such as radio or fridge make place
“illuminated”.
Orientation of a blind people inside the
buildings also depends on the familiarity of
the space [20]. In the known environment
such as home, haptic orientation is almost
unnecessary, except when the orientation is
completely lost.
In an unknown interior, soundscape can
help to extract the information about the
place, however too much noise can make
the orientation completely impossible.
Conclusions
Complete generalization of the soundscape
perception of people with visual
impairment is very difficult, because the
differences among non-sighted people can
be as large as differences between
normally seeing people. It is clear that
blind people perceive the reality also in a
multisensory way, mainly in combination
of acoustics and haptic cues.
Performed research has shown that blind
people are not only more attentive to
acoustics information but they also dispose
more brain volume to process the sonic
information.
Understanding of how do blind people
orient themselves in buildings and urban
public places can help architects, urban
planners and engineers to design buildings
and outdoor places in more inclusive way,
e.g. more accessible to people with visual
handicap.
Acknowledgements
This article was created with the support of
the Ministry of Education, Science,
Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic
within the Research and Development
Operational Programme for the project
"University Science Park of STU
Bratislava", ITMS 26240220084, co-
funded by the European Regional
Development Fund and with a support of
VEGA no.1/0358/13.
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