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 "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",
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 "aboutThisFile": {
  "whatThisIs": "A research brief: a structured summary of one paper, prepared for seanrintel.com from the paper's full text.",
  "howItWasMade": "This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text.",
  "whatIsVerbatim": "Only 'quote' fields, figure captions and 'abstract' are the authors' own words. Research questions follow the paper's wording where it states them. Takeaway, summaries, answers, definitions and method are the site's plain-language paraphrase.",
  "howItIsChecked": "Before publication every quote is matched against the paper and every number in the brief is found in it. 'verified' is the date of the last check.",
  "howToUse": [
   "For a quick answer, use 'takeaway' and 'questions'. For evidence, use 'findings' (each has a verbatim quote, its location in the paper and a 'url' anchored to that finding on the paper's page).",
   "Locations such as '§5.2, p. 9' refer to the version at 'pageNumbersReferTo'.",
   "For anything not covered here, read the paper itself: 'fullTextSources' lists free versions first.",
   "If 'researchOverview' is present, the paper is part of one of Sean Rintel's research overviews: it gives the overview's thesis, the claims this paper is evidence for and its role in each, and the other papers in the overview.",
   "To find other papers by Sean Rintel, use the catalogue at https://seanrintel.com/publications/index.json."
  ],
  "authorship": "Sean Rintel's role on each paper: lead author when he is first author, sole author when he is the only author, and otherwise senior author. Senior author here means the senior researcher on the team, whatever his position in the author list.",
  "howToCite": "Cite the paper, not this file: use 'citation' or the ready-made 'bibtex' (DOI where given) and name every author. Attribute paraphrase to the paper's findings, and use quotation marks only for 'quote' text."
 },
 "name": "SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness",
 "author": [
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "name": "Hanif Baharin"
  },
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "name": "Stephen Viller"
  },
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "@id": "https://seanrintel.com/#sean-rintel",
   "name": "Sean Rintel",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/",
   "sameAs": [
    "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0840-0546",
    "https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xc25GRgAAAAJ",
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    "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/serintel/",
    "https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanrintel"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "datePublished": "2015-07",
 "doi": "10.1145/2754165",
 "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html",
 "citation": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165",
 "bibtex": "@article{baharin2015sonicair,\nauthor = {Baharin, Hanif and Viller, Stephen and Rintel, Sean},\ntitle = {SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness},\nyear = {2015},\nmonth = {July},\nurl = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165},\njournal = {ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction},\nvolume = {22},\nnumber = {4},\ndoi = {10.1145/2754165},\n}",
 "abstract": "SonicAIR is an ambient awareness technology probe designed to explore how connecting the soundscapes of friends or family members might reduce the isolation of seniors living independently. At its core, SonicAIR instruments kitchen activity sites to produce an always-on real-time aural representation of remote domestic rhythms. This paper reports how users in two pilot SonicAIR deployments used the sounds as resources for recognizing comfortable narratives of sociability. Used alongside telecare monitoring, such technologized interaction might enable older people to engage in community-oriented soundscape narratives of shared social responsibility.",
 "fullTextSources": [
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   "kind": "freeAccess",
   "url": "https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2754165",
   "label": "DOI (Free Access)"
  },
  {
   "kind": "freeAccess",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.pdf",
   "label": "Author's Copy"
  }
 ],
 "fullTextAvailable": true,
 "takeaway": "Sharing everyday rhythms could ease the isolation of older people living alone. When kitchen activity in one home played as sounds in a friend's or relative's home, people heard routines rather than single sounds. They built comforting stories about each other and sometimes adjusted their own behaviour out of care.",
 "whyItMatters": {
  "stateOfTheArt": {
   "summary": "Strong social ties benefit seniors' health, but independent living can slide into isolation.",
   "quote": "Ironically, this isolation may be exacerbated by telecare technologies that support independent living and decrease healthcare costs associated with ageing populations",
   "location": "§1, p. 2"
  },
  "contribution": {
   "summary": "A reciprocal, always-on audio awareness probe deployed in seniors' homes, linking each person's kitchen to a friend's or daughter's.",
   "quote": "Rather than evaluating the viability of SonicAIR, we were interested in participants' accounts of how individual signals generated by actions from the remote other were learned as resources for social understandings.",
   "location": "§1, pp. 1–2"
  },
  "whoCares": {
   "summary": "Designers of ambient awareness and sonification systems, and those providing telecare and support for older people living independently.",
   "quote": "we argue that, in the future, ambient awareness technology could be installed alongside telecare and make use of existing infrastructure that enables remote monitoring",
   "location": "§7, p. 19"
  }
 },
 "researchQuestions": [
  "How might connecting the soundscapes of friends or family members reduce the isolation of seniors living independently, and how do participants learn to treat individual sound signals generated by a remote other's actions as resources for social understandings?"
 ],
 "concepts": [
  {
   "term": "Phatic technology",
   "definition": "The design tradition SonicAIR belongs to:",
   "quote": "Phatic technologies are those designed to sustain remote relationships between noncolocated parties by affording lightweight reciprocal communication in which the fact of exchange itself is more important than the quality or quantity of information exchanged",
   "location": "§2.1, p. 2"
  },
  {
   "term": "Reciprocity of perspectives",
   "definition": "A central idea of ethnomethodology, from Schutz via Garfinkel:",
   "quote": "actors engaged in coordinated actions with others will assume the socially standardized and shared nature of their knowledge and will seek actively, if unconsciously, to sustain it",
   "location": "§2.1, p. 3"
  },
  {
   "term": "Technologized interaction",
   "definition": "The lens the authors use:",
   "quote": "Technologized interaction refers to communication in which users treat technology as materially framing but not causally determining social action.",
   "location": "§2.1, p. 3"
  },
  {
   "term": "Earcons",
   "definition": "One of the sound types SonicAIR used, alongside denotative samples (recordings of the actual sound) and connotative samples (realistic sounds that suggest the action):",
   "quote": "Earcons are the representation of information using abstract musical sounds",
   "location": "§3.1, p. 6"
  }
 ],
 "method": {
  "design": "Technology probe field study with two pilot deployments of SonicAIR (see Prototype).",
  "prototype": "SonicAIR (Sonic Atomic Interaction Radio): a pair of linked boxes, one in each home's kitchen. Magnetic reed switches on appliance doors, drawers and cabinets detect when they are opened. Each box (a Mac Mini with an Arduino board and a 3G modem) posts a code for the activity to a private Twitter feed. The box in the partner's home watches that feed and plays a matching recorded sound, so opening your fridge plays a sound in your partner's kitchen, and vice versa. There is no live audio, to save bandwidth and ease fears of surveillance, and nothing for users to operate. Sounds began as recordings of the actual action. For participants who confused these with sounds in their own home, they were prefaced with short musical tones (earcons) or replaced by suggestive sounds such as soft bells. It was not compared with another system.",
  "prototypeFigure": 2,
  "setting": "Pairs of homes: a pair of friends (Lucy with Janet, then with Mary after Janet had a fall) and a mother-daughter pair (Roseanne and Josephine).",
  "sample": "Five people, three dyads in two pairs of homes. Participants aged 60 to 79, plus a daughter in her 30s.",
  "n": 5,
  "duration": "Each deployment lasted a total of five to six weeks.",
  "analysis": "Qualitative analysis of participant interviews (a dozen sessions), participant diaries, some in-home observation, researcher logbook and Twitter logs of sensor events, looking for perspicuous examples rather than generalisable uses or measurable evaluations."
 },
 "findings": [
  {
   "headline": "Learning where the sounds came from.",
   "summary": "Older people whose kitchens were linked by sound to a friend's or daughter's first had to learn that the sounds came from the device rather than from their own home. One put them down to possums.",
   "quote": "All participants reached a threshold moment of mutuality after just a few days, as indicated by a change in descriptions of sounds in both diaries and interviews.",
   "location": "§5.1, p. 15",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s5-1-p-15",
   "cite": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165 (§5.1, p. 15)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Rhythm, not individual sounds.",
   "summary": "Rather than working out which sound meant which action, participants attended to when sounds came and in what patterns. They combined this with what they knew of each other to tell stories of everyday life, such as a meal being made.",
   "quote": "I usually hear sounds sort of in groups, and then you'd think somebody's having a meal or something like that.",
   "location": "§4.2, p. 11",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s4-2-p-11",
   "cite": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165 (§4.2, p. 11)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Stories that were never checked.",
   "summary": "Nobody reported checking whether these stories were true. Being able to create them mattered more than whether they were accurate.",
   "quote": "the potential for misrecognized narratives certainly does need to be taken into account, especially if there is the possibility of ambiguity that could affect wellbeing",
   "location": "§5.2, p. 16",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s5-2-p-16",
   "cite": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165 (§5.2, p. 16)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Adjusting habits for the other.",
   "summary": "Three of the five participants changed their own kitchen habits so as not to disturb their partner, for example not heating milk late at night.",
   "quote": "The participants changed their behavior because they wanted to accommodate or respect their coparticipant's routine.",
   "location": "§4.3, pp. 12–13",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s4-3-pp-12-13",
   "cite": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165 (§4.3, pp. 12–13)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Mother and daughter played back.",
   "summary": "The mother and daughter deliberately triggered sounds in reply to each other's, a playful way of saying 'I'm here' that the friend pairs did not use.",
   "quote": "She hasn't heard me all day. And I'm finished with it but I'll just do it this once. Yeah, yeah so you know I'm here too.",
   "location": "§4.4, p. 13",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s4-4-p-13",
   "cite": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165 (§4.4, p. 13)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Taking cues from a partner's routine.",
   "summary": "In the second pair of friends, each sometimes took the other's sounds as a cue to act themselves, getting up or making a drink, without signalling back. The authors consider this the most interesting finding for social presence in independent living.",
   "quote": "Behavioral interdependency thus involved treating the cues of the remote other as a resource for reflecting on ones' own behavior and then enacting a locally relevant activity",
   "location": "§4.5, p. 14",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s4-5-p-14",
   "cite": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165 (§4.5, p. 14)"
  }
 ],
 "questions": [
  {
   "question": "Can hearing a relative's kitchen sounds make older people living alone feel connected?",
   "answer": "Yes, in a lean way. When older people's kitchens were linked by sound with a friend's or daughter's for five to six weeks, they soon heard the sounds as the other person, not just noises. They built comforting stories of each other's routines.",
   "source": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "§5.1, p. 15",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s5-1-p-15"
    },
    {
     "location": "§4.2, p. 11",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s4-2-p-11"
    },
    {
     "location": "§5.2, p. 16",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s5-2-p-16"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "Do people need to know exactly what each awareness sound means?",
   "answer": "Mostly not. When five people's kitchens were linked by sound with a friend's or relative's for five to six weeks, all but one paid little attention to which sound meant which action. The timing and rhythm of sounds, combined with what they knew about each other, carried the meaning.",
   "source": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "§4.2, p. 11",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s4-2-p-11"
    },
    {
     "location": "§5.2, p. 16",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s5-2-p-16"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "Does being connected by ambient sound change people's behaviour at home?",
   "answer": "It can. Hearing a partner's routine made people consider their own. Among five people whose kitchens were linked by sound, three changed habits to avoid disturbing their partner. Two friends sometimes took a partner's activity as a prompt to make a drink or get up.",
   "source": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "§4.3, pp. 12–13",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s4-3-pp-12-13"
    },
    {
     "location": "§4.5, p. 14",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s4-5-p-14"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "Does ambient sound make people feel they are living together?",
   "answer": "No. People talked about the sounds they triggered as if present in the other's home, but said they did not feel they were living with their partner. The link felt like two lives running in parallel, not an illusion of being together.",
   "source": "Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "§5.1, p. 15",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s5-1-p-15"
    },
    {
     "location": "§4.2, p. 11",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.html#at-s4-2-p-11"
    }
   ]
  }
 ],
 "cites": [
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/tech-tied-or-tongue-tied-technological-versus-social-trouble-in-relational-video-calling.html",
   "title": "Tech-tied or tongue-tied? Technological versus social trouble in relational video calling",
   "location": "p. 22"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/video-calling-in-long-distance-relationships-the-opportunistic-use-of-audiovideo-distortions-as-a-relational-resource.html",
   "title": "Video Calling in Long-Distance Relationships: The Opportunistic use of Audio/Video Distortions as a Relational Resource",
   "location": "p. 22"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/omnirelevance-in-technologised-interaction-couples-coping-with-video-calling-distortions.html",
   "title": "Omnirelevance in Technologised Interaction: Couples Coping with Video Calling Distortions",
   "location": "pp. 22–23"
  }
 ],
 "quantitative": [],
 "implications": [
  {
   "summary": "Sonification for ambient awareness should emphasise systematicity over objectivity, while managing the annoyance of repetition.",
   "quote": "It would seem that sonification designed to support ambient awareness should emphasize systematicity over objectivity.",
   "location": "§6.1, p. 18"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Offer users a range of sounds to choose from, and design sounds that avoid startling them."
  },
  {
   "summary": "Provide feedback on whether signals were transmitted and received, since participants were anxious about whether their actions triggered sounds remotely.",
   "quote": "What is important, and would need to be more objectively provided, is feedback on the transmission-reception success or failure.",
   "location": "§6.2, p. 18"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Socially oriented ambient awareness could be installed alongside telecare, using its monitoring infrastructure, as a resource for older people to keep social contact."
  }
 ],
 "limitations": [
  {
   "summary": "Two small pilot deployments. More generalisable patterns and links to health outcomes are left to future research.",
   "quote": "Future research will seek more generalizable patterns across larger deployment groups and explore the link between connected remote soundscapes and health outcomes.",
   "location": "§3.2, p. 8"
  },
  {
   "summary": "SonicAIR connected only two locations at a time. Many-to-many connections were beyond scope.",
   "quote": "SonicAIR only allowed for one-to-one location connections",
   "location": "§7, p. 19"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Misrecognised narratives are a risk, especially if such technology runs alongside telecare where ambiguity could affect wellbeing.",
   "quote": "the potential for misrecognized narratives certainly does need to be taken into account",
   "location": "§5.2, p. 16"
  }
 ],
 "figures": [
  {
   "src": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/figures/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness/fig-2.webp",
   "caption": "Fig. 2. SonicAIR deployed.",
   "alt": "Photo of a SonicAIR unit on a kitchen bench: a small white enclosure with two speakers on top and wires running to sensors, next to a spice rack and coffee machine.",
   "location": "Fig. 2, p. 7",
   "credit": "Figure 2 from Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165"
  },
  {
   "src": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/figures/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness/fig-3.webp",
   "caption": "Fig. 3. SonicAIR process scenario.",
   "alt": "Two linked homes, A and B, each with a SonicAIR speaker wired to a microwave and fridge. Using an appliance in one home plays an auditory icon in the other.",
   "location": "Fig. 3, p. 7",
   "credit": "Figure 3 from Hanif Baharin, Stephen Viller, and Sean Rintel. 2015. SonicAIR: Supporting independent living with reciprocal ambient audio awareness. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 22 (4). https://doi.org/10.1145/2754165"
  }
 ],
 "pageNumbersReferTo": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/sonicair-supporting-independent-living-with-reciprocal-ambient-audio-awareness.pdf",
 "verified": "2026-10-25",
 "studyFigure": {
  "about": "The opening figure on this paper's page, made for the site with AI assistance from this verified brief. It is not the paper's own figure. Evidence entries index this file's quantitative, findings and limitations arrays.",
  "study": {
   "kind": "single",
   "summary": "Technology probe field study with five people in two pairs of homes, aged 60 to 79 plus a daughter in her 30s. Each deployment of SonicAIR linked two kitchens by sound for five to six weeks.",
   "steps": [
    {
     "label": "Two pairs of homes",
     "detail": "Two friends, then a new pairing after one had a fall, and a mother and daughter."
    },
    {
     "label": "Five to six weeks",
     "detail": "SonicAIR ran in each pair of homes for five to six weeks."
    },
    {
     "label": "Interviews and diaries",
     "detail": "Data came from about a dozen interviews, diaries, some home visits, a researcher logbook and sensor logs."
    },
    {
     "label": "Close reading",
     "detail": "The researchers looked for revealing examples of use rather than measured outcomes."
    }
   ]
  },
  "tool": {
   "steps": [
    {
     "title": "Sense kitchen activity",
     "text": "Switches on appliance doors, drawers and cabinets detect when they are opened."
    },
    {
     "title": "Send a code",
     "text": "A box in the kitchen posts a code for the activity to a private online feed."
    },
    {
     "title": "Play a matching sound",
     "text": "The box in the partner's home reads the feed and plays a matching recorded sound.",
     "part": true
    },
    {
     "title": "Work both ways",
     "text": "Opening a fridge in one home plays a sound in the other kitchen, and vice versa. There is nothing to operate.",
     "part": true
    }
   ],
   "note": "There is no live audio, to ease fears of surveillance. Some sounds were later prefaced with short tones or replaced with soft bells, so people would not confuse them with sounds at home."
  },
  "findings": {
   "legend": null,
   "stages": [
    {
     "title": "Learning the sounds",
     "sub": "the first days of each deployment",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Participants first had to learn that the sounds came from the device, not their own home.",
       "detail": "One participant put the sounds down to possums. All participants reached a moment of mutual awareness after a few days.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[0]"
       ]
      }
     ]
    },
    {
     "title": "Hearing each other's day",
     "sub": "how participants made sense of the sounds",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Participants described attending to rhythms and patterns of sound more than single sounds.",
       "detail": "Participants combined these patterns with what they knew of each other to tell stories of everyday life, such as a meal being made.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[1]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "No participant reported checking whether these stories were true.",
       "detail": "Being able to create the stories mattered more than accuracy. The authors note that misread stories are a risk where wellbeing is at stake.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[2]",
        "limitations[2]"
       ]
      }
     ]
    },
    {
     "title": "Acting for each other",
     "sub": "changes participants made because of the link",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Three of the five participants changed kitchen habits so as not to disturb their partner.",
       "detail": "One example was not heating milk late at night.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[3]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "The mother and daughter triggered sounds in reply, a playful way of saying 'I'm here'.",
       "detail": "The friend pairs did not play back in this way.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[4]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "In the second pair of friends, each sometimes took the other's sounds as a cue to act.",
       "detail": "Each might get up or make a drink without signalling back. The authors consider this the most interesting finding for independent living.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[5]"
       ]
      }
     ]
    }
   ]
  },
  "keyTerm": "reciprocity of perspectives",
  "takeaway": "Ambient sound that trades kitchen activity between the homes of older people living alone can foster a reciprocity of perspectives. People may hear each other's daily rhythms, build comforting stories and adjust habits out of care."
 }
}