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Clinical Trial
. 2012;7(6):e38660.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0038660. Epub 2012 Jun 7.

Perception of loudness is influenced by emotion

Erkin Asutay  1 , Daniel Västfjäll
Affiliations
Clinical Trial

Perception of loudness is influenced by emotion

Erkin Asutay et al. PLoS One. 2012.

Abstract

Loudness perception is thought to be a modular system that is unaffected by other brain systems. We tested the hypothesis that loudness perception can be influenced by negative affect using a conditioning paradigm, where some auditory stimuli were paired with aversive experiences while others were not. We found that the same auditory stimulus was reported as being louder, more negative and fear-inducing when it was conditioned with an aversive experience, compared to when it was used as a control stimulus. This result provides support for an important role of emotion in auditory perception.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Timeline of a single conditioning trial.
After the presentation of an auditory stimulus that was 5 seconds long tactile stimulus was presented. Between the onsets of two consecutive trials there were 11 seconds. Figure also shows the time windows in which EDA was scored.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Results.
(A) Mean EDA induced by auditory and tactile stimuli during conditioning phase shown for the two conditioning groups (CS+: 250 Hz vs. CS+: 2 kHz). SE is indicated. (B) Average EDA induced by CS+ and CS- in the conditioning phase (the two conditioning groups combined) at different trials. Standard errors of the means are indicated. (C) Interaction effect of conditioning group and sound on loudness (top), fear (middle) and valence (bottom) judgments. Main effects and grand means are removed. SE is indicated.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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