Scream studies could lead to scarier alarms

[Dana Monsour]

Scream studies could lead to scarier alarms
Posted on Tuesday, 21 July, 2015





What is it that makes a human scream such a potent sound ? Image Credit: sxc.hu
Researchers have been attempting to better understand the science behind the sound of a human scream.
Nobody likes to hear the blood-curdling shriek of someone else screaming and with good reason - hearing such a sound can instantly activate the fear response within the human brain.

Scientists studying our perceptions of screaming have determined that all screams, whether it be a terrifying shriek or the wailing of a baby, possess a property known as 'roughness' which refers to how the sound changes and is the key to the impact that hearing a scream seems to have on us.

"If you ask a person on the street what’s special about screams, they’ll say that they’re loud or have a higher pitch," said author David Poeppel. "But there’s lots of stuff that’s loud and there’s lots of stuff that’s high pitched, so you’d want a scream to be genuinely useful in a communicative context."

To study what exactly it is that makes a scream unique Peoppel and his team analyzed screams from a number of different sources including popular horror movies and videos uploaded on YouTube.

"We found that screams occupy a reserved chunk of the auditory spectrum, but we wanted to go through a whole bunch of sounds to verify that this area is unique to screams," he said.

The scientists ultimately determined that by adding 'roughness' to alarm sounds it is possible to make them a lot more effective at communicating a sense of sudden panic and urgency.

"These findings suggest that the design of alarm signals can be further improved," said Postdoctoral researcher Luc Arnal. "The same way a bad smell is added to natural gas to make it easily detectable; adding roughness to alarm sounds may improve and accelerate their processing."

http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/scream-research-could-lead-to-scarier-alarms-150716.htm

[Dana Monsour]

Scream Research Could Lead to Scarier Alarms
Jul 16, 2015 12:00 PM ET // by Jennifer Viegas




The sound of a person screaming is so powerful that it instantly activates the brain’s fear circuitry, new research documenting the “acoustic signature of screams” finds.

Different types of screaming — including wails from distressed babies — all have a property called roughness, which refers to how fast a sound’s volume changes. Duplicating that quality, outlined in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology, could lead to everything from scarier films to new and improved alarm sounds.

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“If you ask a person on the street what’s special about screams, they’ll say that they’re loud or have a higher pitch,” senior author David Poeppel of New York University said in a press release. “But there’s lots of stuff that’s loud and there’s lots of stuff that’s high pitched, so you’d want a scream to be genuinely useful in a communicative context.”

To figure out what makes screams unique, Poeppel’s post doc Luc Arnal (now at the University of Geneva) plotted sound waves from screams heard in certain YouTube videos, popular films, and recordings of volunteer screamers.

This is similar to what they used in the study. The video shows people from the Netherlands screaming.

The scientists then determined how screams are processed in the brain.

“We found that screams occupy a reserved chunk of the auditory spectrum, but we wanted to go through a whole bunch of sounds to verify that this area is unique to screams,” said Poeppel, who also directs the Frankfurt Max-Planck-Institute Department of Neuroscience.

“In a series of experiments,” he added, “we saw this observation remained true when we compared screaming to singing and speaking, even across different languages. The only exception — and what was peculiar and cool — is that alarm signals (car alarms, house alarms, etc.) also activate the range set aside for screams.”

The researchers noted that normal speech patterns only have slight differences in loudness (between 4 and 5 Hz), but screams can modulate very fast, varying between 30 and 150 Hz. This is the “roughness” that they described. It is processed by the amygdala — an almond-shaped mass of gray matter in the brain that has been associated with the processing and expression of anger and fear.

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“These findings suggest that the design of alarm signals can be further improved,” Arnal said. “The same way a bad smell is added to natural gas to make it easily detectable; adding roughness to alarm sounds may improve and accelerate their processing.”

Since people around the world respond similarly to screams and alarm sounds, this suggests that the ability to detect them is hardwired in us and perhaps originated in our primate ancestors. Since other animals vocalize in a comparable way when frightened, the detection skills could even carry over to many animals aside from primates. Future studies, however, will help to find out how much the trait is conserved across multiple species.

[She-ra, Princess of Power]

Interesting, I am sure they could even make something scarier than a human scream with the right amount of funding!

[Alona Hyatt]

It's the kids scream about 6yo to 8yo, they scream at anything, and all during playtime, So that scream in the movie Gladiator (2000) in the scene @ 10:16, where the barbarian chief swings is typical.

[DecoNoir]

Haha, I cant imagine the stress of waking up every morning to a blood curdling scream!

[Spectrum]

most ads will probably uses the same spectrum too ...

[Raissa]

Nothing is as shrill or fingernail-curling, as a 3,4 or 5 year old girls scream... A boys scream at that age is almost as bad, but a girls scream has that slightly higher pitch... I have numerous great-nieces and nephews and when they run around and play, their screams make me want to climb the walls...

[On Earth as it is in Heaven]

Ive always found the old air raid siren the worst sound imaginable!

[Okane]

We have those for tornado sirens - scattered all about the city... Yeah they are pretty hard to not hear..

[freetoroam]

For panic alarms, and such like smoke/CO2 detectors, I can see that... or not. What's wrong with the standard digital very loud "shrill" already in use? Why change that to a "scream"? For an alarm clock, forget it. After a few nights I would think some mild form of PTSD would develop, making sleeping difficult as one anticipates, subconsciously, a horrific wake-up scream. My favorite alarm clock gently wakes me up. First a series of low volume beeps, then it progressively get's louder. For public PA emergencies, I think a scream voice could illicit undue panic.