Analysing changes in physiological response to different soundscape scenarios.

Noise pollution is one of the key environmental stressors leading to multiple health impacts for people and communities. Exposure to high noise levels may also be responsible for sudden emotional and physiological changes in humans. The experiment examines the change in Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) signals during exposure to pre-recorded soundscape scenarios. These scenarios were recorded in New Delhi, India and London, UK, using a binaural microphone set. The listening experiment was conducted in a laboratory, where 24 healthy individuals without any hearing impairment or any psychological issues participated. A total of 30 soundscape scenarios were presented to each participant in a randomised order. The continuous decomposition analysis is conducted to decompose that data into tonic and phasic components. The phasic component of the signal is used for the analysis. It is observed that skin conductance response (SCR) increases with changes in the overall loudness of the signal. Psychoacoustic indicators are used to identify the relationship between different acoustical characters of noise and changes in SCR. The perception-based survey suggests that GSR response is highly dependent on the pleasantness level of the soundscape scenario.