Psychological and physiological responses to the rustling sounds of Korean traditional silk fabrics

The objectives of this study were to investigate physiological and psychological responses to the rustling sound of Korean traditional silk fabrics and to figure out objective measurements such as sound parameters and mechanical properties determining the human responses. Five different traditional silk fabrics were selected by cluster analysis and their sound characteristics were observed in terms of FFT spectra and some calculated sound parameters including level pressure of total sound (LPT), Zwicker’s psychoacoustic parameters — loudness(Z), sharpness(Z), roughness(Z), and fluctuation strength(Z), and sound color factors such as ΔL and Δf. As physiological signals, the ratio of low frequency to high frequency (LF/HF) from the power spectrum of heart rate variability, pulse volume (PV), heart rate (HR), and skin conductance level (SCL) evoked by the fabric sounds were measured from thirty participants. Also, seven aspects of psychological state including softness, loudness, sharpness, roughness, clearness, highness, and pleasantness were evaluated when each sound was presented. The traditional silk fabric sounds were likely to be felt as soft and pleasant rather than clear and high, which seemed to evoke less change of both LF/HF and SCL indicating a negative sensation than other fabrics previously reported. As fluctuation strength(Z) were higher and bending rigidity (B) values lower, the fabrics tended to be perceived as sounding softer, which resulted in increase of PV changes. The higher LPT was concerned with higher rating for subjective loudness so that HR was more increased. Also, compression linearity (LC) affected subjective pleasantness positively, which caused less changes of HR. Therefore, we concluded that such objective measurements as LPT, fluctuation strength(Z), bending rigidity (B), and compression linearity (LC) were significant factors affecting physiological and psychological responses to the sounds of Korean traditional silk fabrics.