Perception of emotions in knocking sounds: An evaluation study

Knocking sounds are highly meaningful everyday sounds. There exist many ways of knocking, expressing important information about the state of the person knocking and their relationship with the other side of the door. In media production, knocking sounds are important storytelling devices: they allow transitions to new scenes and create expectations in the audience. Despite this important role, knocking sounds have rarely been the focus of research. In this study, we create a data set of knocking actions performed with different emotional intentions. We then verify, through a listening test, whether these emotional intentions are perceived through listening to sound alone. Finally, we perform an acoustic analysis of the experimental data set to identify whether emotion-specific acoustic patterns emerge. The results show that emotional intentions are correctly perceived for some emotions. Additionally, the emerging emotion-specific acoustic patterns confirm, at least in part, findings from previous research in speech and music performance