Annoyance and Impulsivity Judgments of Environmental Noises

This study was part of a joint European research programme into community response to impulsive noise.Existing national and international standards assume that the annoyance of impulsive sounds can be ssessed by subjective judgment.I! the sound is judged impulsive, a penalty is added to the measured level.The aim of this particular study was to investigate the relationship between annoyance and subjective impulsivity of a representative range of impulsive and non-impulsive sounds.The study provided subjective data for comparison with physical analyses of the sounds.These phpleal analyses were carried out at the National Physical laboratories l and the lnstitut (ur Medizinische Psychologie 2.The overall goal at the programme was to develop guidelina for the assessment.regulation, and control of impulsive noise in the community.