Alaa Algargoosh

Scopus Publications

Ten questions concerning autism and auditory accessibility in buildings
Bruno S. Masiero, Fernanda Caldas-Correia, Samuel H. Underwood, Carmen Rosas-Pérez, Alaa Algargoosh, et al.
Building and Environment, 2025
ReMirrorFugue: Examining the Emotional Experience of Presence and (Illusory) Communications Across Time
Xiao Xiao, Hayoun Noh, Adrien Lefevre, Lucy Li, Holly McKee, et al.
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings, 2025
This paper examines how strategies for simulating social presence across distance can evoke a sense of presence and facilitate illusory interactions across time. We conducted a mixed-methods study with 28 participants, exploring their emotional experience of interacting with decade-old recorded piano performances on MirrorFugue—a player piano enhanced with life-sized projections of the pianist’s hands and body, creating the illusion of a virtual reflection playing the instrument. Data were collected via wearable sensors, questionnaires, and interviews. Results showed that participants felt a strong presence of past pianists, with some experiencing the illusion of two-way communication and an overall increase in connection. The emotional experience was significantly influenced by the participant’s relationship with the recorded pianist and the pianist’s vital status. These findings suggest that telepresence technologies can foster connections with the past, offering spaces for memory recall, self-reflection, and a sense of “time travel.”
The link between the acoustic characteristics of worship spaces and their emotional impact
Alaa Algargoosh
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2024
The emotional impact of sound depends on its characteristics. Given that such characteristics can be modified when the sound is played in a room, it is crucial to examine how the acoustic characteristic of a room can impact the emotional experience. Researchers have investigated the links between the acoustic parameters of concert halls and the emotional impact; however, the applicability of such links to other building types, such as worship spaces, needs to be studied. In a previous study, the author analyzed the emotional response to the acoustic environments of worship spaces using self-report and physiological indicators. This paper builds on the previous work by analyzing the acoustic parameters of the buildings from the previous study and establishing links between such parameters and the emotional response indicators. It also analyzes the frequency domain to study the role of the interaction between the room and sound source in enhancing the emotional experience and introduces resonance quality (Q) and resonance width (Δf) as important parameters to consider in room acoustics. The results showed the significance of considering frequencies &lt; 1000 Hz in analyzing the acoustics of the studied worship spaces and demonstrated that amplifying the dominant frequency range of the sound source was linked to enhancing the emotional experience.
Psychoacoustic metrics and affective responses in indoor soundscapes: Implications for restorative soundscapes
Alaa ALGARGOOSH, Hector ASTROM, Hend ALRASHEED
53rd International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering Internoise 2024, 2024
This study investigates the links between psychoacoustic metrics and affective responses in indoor soundscapes, guided by the ISO/TS 12913 standard. Through the analysis of an indoor soundscapes dataset, we examine how various psychoacoustic metrics, namely sharpness (S), fluctuation strength (FS), and roughness (R), influence affective responses such as pleasant and eventful. Our research reveals that eventful and annoying soundscapes show higher values of (S), (FS), and (R). Conversely, pleasant soundscapes tend to show lower values in these metrics. The findings suggest that while these metrics can be effective in designing eventful soundscapes, they may be less useful for creating pleasant acoustic environments. This study contributes to the understanding of the applicability of current psychoacoustic metrics for the type of soundscape intervention and calls for the development of new psychoacoustic metrics to design restorative soundscapes that enhance well-being.
A method for analyzing room modal response using auralization
Alaa Algargoosh, Mojtaba Navvab, John Granzow
Applied Acoustics, 2022
The impact of the acoustic environment on human emotion and experience: A case study of worship spaces
Alaa Algargoosh, Babak Soleimani, Sile O’Modhrain, Mojtaba Navvab
Building Acoustics, 2022
People’s interactions with the environment shape their experiences. Thus, understanding these interactions is critical to enhancing human well-being. Aural attributes play a significant role in shaping the perception of space in addition to visual attributes. It is well known that sounds evoke an emotional response, but less is known about how the acoustic characteristics of environments reinforce such an emotional impact. By adopting virtual reality as a platform for recreating 3D sounds and 360° visuals of built environments of worship spaces as case studies, this study aims to investigate the influence of the acoustic environment considering audiovisual congruency on enhancing the human experience through self-report and physiological response analysis. It also examines the role of cultural background in terms of familiarity with the acoustic environment. The convergent mixed-methods approach, merging both quantitative and qualitative analysis, provides a deep understanding of the role of the acoustic environment in enhancing the auditory experience. The results show that the acoustic environment and audiovisual congruency amplify the intensity of the emotional impact, and the amplification of the impact can vary depending on the acoustic environment of the building. They also reveal that familiarity with sound and acoustic characteristics can increase this impact.
Enhancing Well-being through Acoustic Environments
Proceedings of the International Congress on Acoustics, 2022
Creating a psychologically supportive environment through aural architecture
24th International Congress on Sound and Vibration Icsv 2017, 2017
Improving the indoor sound quality by using cymatic shapes
Alaa S. Algargoosh, Hany Hossam Eldien, Hala El-Wakeel
Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 2013
Acoustic diffusers are important components in enhancing the quality of room acoustics. This paper investigates a new type of 2D diffusers obtained by the Cymatics phenomena. Cymatics is the study of sound and vibration made visible, typically on the surface of a plate, diaphragm or membrane. Four shapes of the diffusers were designed by the Cymatic shapes and modeled by using a quadratic residue sequence. The polar response of the diffusers was measured using DIRAC software. Polar response results were generally consistent with expectations. This type of diffusers can generate a uniform polar response over the frequency range we are interested in (400Hz- 4000Hz). It is found that this type of acoustic diffusers can be used to maintain the acoustic energy in a room, and at the same time can treat unwanted echoes and reflections by scattering sound waves in many directions.