Multi-sensory congruence in vehicle sound quality assessment: Effects of vibration and irrelevant emotional primes on affective reactions and evaluations of product sounds

Abstract

A listening test was performed where a group of professional truck drivers were asked to rate their impressions of binaurally recorded interior truck sound of different levels, while subjected to different vibration levels in the steering wheel and in the foot rest of a truck simulator. The hypothesis was that, if the sound and vibrations had the same relative levels as the original environment inside a real truck cabin, the emotional reactions would not be as negative as if either of the modalities was significantly increased relative to the other. The results indicate some support for this hypothesis. In addition, the effects of irrelevant emotional primes on sound quality assessment were studied. The results are discussed in relation to multi-modal theories of emotional sound design for vehicle interiors.