Hearing but not listening: Auditory icons and presence

This paper explores the usage of auditory icons in creating the feeling of presence of a remote person in a virtual simulation of domestic life. Auditory icons are the representation of processes or activities using everyday sounds. Presence is defined in this research as ‘the feeling of being with others’. In this research, domestic life is simulated using the game called The Sims. Participants were asked to play the game while being able to hear auditory icons that represent another player who were playing the game in a remote place. In actuality the auditory icons is just a sound loop. A presence questionnaire given to 49 users participating in 2 research trials shows that auditory icons can easily be ignored and thus do not induce a high level of social presence, but when the auditory icons are given attention to, social presence is significantly increased. The results from the trials are also discussed from the perspective of Acoustic Communication Theory, which shows that as the auditory environment becomes saturated with sound objects, people tend to be ‘distracted listeners’. At the time of writing more experiments are being done to study the effects of auditory icons on presence.