The semantic judgments of presumed naive and sophisticated listeners were obtained by means of 18 semantic differential scales to 4 acoustic stimuli, 2 pure tones (250 and 4000 cps), and 2 complex tones (sawtooth and white noise), to determine whether previous familiarity with specific sounds affected their psychological perceptions. Results revealed that both naive and sophisticated listeners judged the auditory stimuli in a similar manner, but sophisticated listeners demonstrated more extreme responses. It was concluded that previous listening experience with specific acoustic signals affected the intensity of the psychological meaning evoked by these sounds, but not necessarily the direction of meaning.
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