  Among environmental sounds, we have chosen to study a class of action-related
impact sounds: automobile door closure sounds. We propose to describe these
sounds using a model composed of perceptual properties. The development of the
perceptual model was derived from the evaluation of many door closure sounds
measured under controlled laboratory listening conditions. However, listening
to such sounds normally occurs within a natural context, which probably
modifies their perception. We therefore need to study differences between the
real situation and the laboratory situation by following standard practices in
order to specify the precise listening conditions and observe the influence of
previous learning, expectations, action-perception interactions, and attention
given to sounds. Our process consists in doing in situ experiments that are
compared with specific laboratory experiments in order to isolate certain
influential, context dependent components.
