Annoyance

About: Annoyance is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2015 publications have been published within this topic receiving 38300 citations. The topic is also known as: annoy.

Exposure to the road traffic noise in an urban complex in Greece: the quantification of healthy life years lost due to noise-induced annoyance and noise-induced sleep disturbances

Abstract: In the recent years, the environmental noise is a global issue of great concern. Especially, it is considered to be one of the most deleterious environmental risk factors for the human health and well-being in urban areas. In this study, we focus on the major source of the transportation noise in the modern-day urbanized societies, which is the road traffic noise. The study was performed in the urban complex in Thessaloniki-Neapoli in Greece, and the estimation of the road traffic noise levels was based on the CoRTN (Calculation of Road Traffic Noise) prediction method. In addition, we estimated the EBD (environmental burden of disease), in terms of DALYs (disability-adjusted life years), due to the annoyance and sleep disturbances associated with the exposure to road traffic noise. The estimation of the EBD was based on the strategic noise mapping in Thessaloniki-Neapoli as well as on the guidance document produced by the WHO (World Health Organization) for the quantitative assessment on the humans’ health consequences of the environmental noise. Above all, the results revealed the magnitude of the health damage caused by the transportation noise.

A psychoacoustic annoyance concept for application in sound quality

Abstract: Industry engineers have to deal with the customer raising demands for acoustic comfort. At present, in the case of the judgment of sounds, manufacturers and customers go different ways. In the development labs noise is analyzed mainly by means of physical parameters. However, the customer judges a noise by means of human sense of hearing. These views can result in different assessments for the same sound. Therefore, objective quantities describing the different attributes of a sound in line with the human hearing system are necessary. In this study a psychoacoustic attempt is introduced aiming at a procedure for an objectively measurable psychoacoustic annoyance. The first results of a pilot study with synthetic noises with different loudness, sharpness, fluctuation strength, and roughness are presented, showing which psychoacoustic hearing sensations are related to the psychoacoustic annoyance evaluation of subjects. It is shown how the psychoacoustic annoyance evaluation changes if variations of more th...

Relating traffic, construction, and ventilation noise to cognitive performances and subjective perceptions.

Abstract: The present study investigates the cognitive performance and subjective perceptions in the context of road traffic noise alone and multiple noises, including construction and ventilation noises. A total of 20 university students were exposed to seven noise conditions. Laboratory experiments employed semantic and episodic memory tasks. Self-reports of perception were collected from the participants. It was found that multiple noise sources impaired the free recall of words, and free recall scores were affected by noise type. Significant differences in free recall scores were found when the noise level difference between the individual noise and multiple noise sources was more than 5 dB. In contrast, word comprehension did not mediate the effects of noise on semantic memory. Annoyance caused by multiple noise sources correlated highly with the results of the free recall and word comprehension tasks. Moreover, loudness and roughness were found to account for the annoyance ratings of combinations of road traffic noise with construction or ventilation noises.