PERSONAL FACTORS AFFECTING THE AUDIO-VISUAL PERCEPTION OF THE URBAN PUBLIC SPACE

摘要

This paper summarises a continued analysis of a previously conducted experiment with a group of 71 normal hearing participants experiencing a virtual walk along an urban bridge over a highway by means of virtual reality technology. The pleasantness of crossing the bridge for each participant was surveyed during this virtual walk. In a companioning experiment, the participants performed an audio-visual attention test. Noise sensitivity was assessed by means of a short questionnaire. The aim of this analysis was to find out how personal factors like auditory or visual dominance, and noise sensitivity, can affect the individual perception of the urban environment. The analysis of the looking behaviour during the virtual walk was compared to the results of the attention tests and noise sensitivity. Significantly different pleasantness ratings were observed for people with different attentive abilities for a scenario with an unpleasantly rated visual and shielded traffic noise. The auditory dominated participants rated the experience more pleasant than the participants that are easily visually distracted. These two groups also showed a remarkably different looking behaviour when walking over the bridge: the auditory participants turned the head to look directly at the source and during a longer time than the ones that were visually dominated. These results showed a statistically significant difference. No statistical significance was found for other personal factors like age, gender or sensitivity to noise. As a conclusion, the analysis showed the important difference between auditory and visually dominated persons, strongly impacting their appreciation of the urban environment.