LAVANDIER Catherine

The goal of my research is to understand how humans perceive their sound environment. My studies on the perception of soundscapes in closed sites are in the field of architectural acoustics, while studies on open-air environments are classified in the field of environmental or industrial acoustics (aircraft and railway noise). Different approaches can be used:

• The psycho-physical approach:
  This approach is used to characterize sounds or transport noises and to measure the impact of the various sound parameters (emergence and number of events, frequency and time analysis, etc.) on the perceived quality of environments or on the discomfort that could result. From a methodological point of view, this approach is inspired by the paradigms of experimental psychology (perceptual tests in the laboratory).
• The cognitive approach:
  This one is concerned with the complexity of the human being. In this approach, the object of study is not the environment itself but the human being in his individual and collective context, which perceives and interacts with the world around him. From a methodological point of view, discourse analysis makes it possible to understand the individual and collective representations on which the various perceptions of the studied environments are constructed. Applied to sound, this systemic approach makes it possible to understand how the meaning of sources (voice, natural sources or vehicles) influences the judgment that one can have of a sound environment, because it is not necessarily the loudest sound that people would retain but the one that makes sense. In this global context, I can also be interested in multi-sensory perception of the environment (for example, the influence of vision on sound perception).