A set of experiments was conducted to examine the loudness of sounds with temporally asymmetric amplitude envelopes. Envelopes were generated with fast-attack/slow-decay characteristics to produce F–S (or “fast–slow”) stimuli, while temporally reversed versions of these same envelopes produced corresponding S–F (“slow–fast”) stimuli. For sinusoidal (330–6000 Hz) and broadband noise carriers, S–F stimuli were louder than F–S stimuli of equal energy. The magnitude of this effect was sensitive to stimulus order, with the largest differences between F–S and S–F loudness occurring after exposure to a preceding F–S stimulus. These results are not compatible with automatic gain control, power-spectrum models of loudness, or predictions obtained using the auditory image model [Patterson et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 98, 1890–1894 (1995)]. Rather, they are comparable to phenomena of perceptual constancy, and may be related to the parsing of auditory input into direct and reverberant sound.
Topics
Automatic gain control
REFERENCES
1.
Akeroyd
, M. A.
, and Patterson
, R. D.
(1995
). “Discrimination of wideband noises modulated by temporally asymmetric function
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
98
, 2466
–2474
. 2.
Boring
, E. G.
(1952
). “Visual perception as invariance
,” Psychol. Rev.
59
, 141
–148
. 3.
Canevet
, G.
, and Scharf
, B.
(1990
). “The loudness of sounds that increase and decrease continuously in level
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
88
, 2136
–2142
. 4.
Canevet
, G.
, Scharf
, B.
, Schlauch
, R.
, Teghtsoonian
, M.
, and Teghtsoonian
, R.
(1999
). “Perception of changes in loudness
,” Nature (London)
398
, 673
. 5.
Carlyon
, R. P.
(1996
). “Spread of excitation produced by maskers with damped and ramped envelopes
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
99
, 3647
–3655
. 6.
Cutting
, J. E.
, and Rosner
, B. S.
(1974
). “Categories and boundaries in speech and music
,” Percept. Psychophys.
16
, 564
–570
. 7.
Gilchrist
, A. L.
(1977
). “Perceived lightness depends on perceived spatial arrangement
,” Science
195
(4274
), 185
–187
. 8.
Gordon
, J. W.
(1987
). “The perceptual attack time of musical tones
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
82
, 88
–105
. 9.
Hartmann
, W. M.
(1978
). “The effect of amplitude envelope on the pitch of sine wave tones
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
63
, 1105
–1113
. 10.
Houtsma, A. J. M., Rossing, T. D., and Wagenaars, W. M. (1987). “Effects of echoes,” in Auditory Demonstrations [Institute for Perception Research (IPO), Eindhoven, The Netherlands].
11.
Irino
, T.
, and Patterson
, R. D.
(1996
). “Temporal asymmetry in the auditory system
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
99
, 2316
–2331
. 12.
Jameson
, D.
, and Hurvich
, L. M.
(1989
). “Essay concerning color constancy
,” Annu. Rev. Psychol.
40
, 1
–22
. 13.
Jesteadt
, W.
, Luce
, R. D.
, and Green
, D. M.
(1977
). “Sequential effects in judgments of loudness
,” J. Exp. Psychol.
3
, 92
–104
. 14.
Lakatos
, S.
, McAdams
, S.
, and Causse
, R.
(1997
). “The representation of auditory source characteristics: Simple geometric form
,” Percept. Psychophys.
59
(8
), 1180
–1190
. 15.
Marks
, L. E.
(1988
). “Magnitude estimation and sensory matching
,” Percept. Psychophys.
43
, 511
–525
. 16.
Moore
, B. C. J.
, and Glasberg
, B. R.
(1996
). “A revision of Zwicker’s loudness model
,” Acust. Acta Acust.
82
(2
), 335
–345
. 17.
Morton
, J.
, and Marcus
, S.
(1976
). “Perceptual centers (p-centers)
,” Psychol. Rev.
83
(5
), 405
–408
. 18.
Neuhoff
, J. G.
(1998a
). “Perception of changes in loudness-reply
,” Nature (London)
398
, 673
–674
. 19.
Neuhoff
, J. G.
(1998b
). “Perceptual bias for rising tones
,” Nature (London)
395
, 123
–124
. 20.
Patterson
, R. D.
(1994a
). “The sound of a sinusoid: Spectral models
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
96
, 1409
–1418
. 21.
Patterson
, R. D.
(1994b
). “The sound of a sinusoid: Time-interval models
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
96
, 1419
–1428
. 22.
Patterson
, R. D.
, and Irino
, T.
(1998
). “Modeling temporal asymmetry in the auditory system
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
104
, 2967
–2979
. 23.
Patterson
, R. D.
, Allerhand
, M. H.
, and Giguere
, C.
(1995
). “Time-domain modelling of peripheral auditory processing: A modular architecture and software platform
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
98
, 1890
–1894
. 24.
Rock, I. (1997). Indirect Perception (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA).
25.
Rosen
, S. M.
, and Howell
, P.
(1981
). “Plucks and bows are not categorically perceived
,” Percept. Psychophys.
30
, 156
–168
. 26.
Schlauch, R., Ries, D., DiGiovanni, J., Elliot, S., and Campbell, S. (1998). “Intensity discrimination of ramped and damped tones,” in 16th International Congress on Acoustics (Acoustical Society of America, Seattle).
27.
Sekuler
, A.
, and Palmer
, S.
(1992
). “Perception of partly occluded objects: A microgenetic analysis
,” J. Exp. Psychol.
121
(1
), 95
–111
. 28.
Slaney, M., and Lyon, R. (1990). “A perceptual pitch detector,” in ICASSP90, 1990 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (IEEE, New York), pp. 357–360.
29.
SPSS (1999). SPSS: Statistical package for the social sciences, Version 9.0, Chicago, IL.
30.
Stecker, G. C. (1995). “The effect of context on perceptual center,” First-year research paper, Dept. of Psychology, U.C. Berkeley.
31.
Stecker, G. C., and Hafter, E. R. (1998). “Temporal asymmetry and loudness: Frequency and duration effects,” in Proceedings of the 21st ARO Mid-winter Meeting (Association for Research in Otolaryngology, St. Petersburg, FL).
32.
Stevens
, S. S.
(1956
). “The direct estimation of sensory magnitudes—loudness
,” Am. J. Psychol.
69
(1
), 1
–25
. 33.
Vos
, J.
, and Rasch
, R.
(1981
). “The perceptual onset of musical tones
,” Percept. Psychophys.
29
(4
), 323
–335
. 34.
Wessel, D. (1995). Personal communication.
35.
Zwicker
, E.
, and Scharf
, B.
(1965
). “A model of loudness summation
,” Psychol. Rev.
72
(1
), 3
–26
.
This content is only available via PDF.
© 2000 Acoustical Society of America.
2000
Acoustical Society of America
You do not currently have access to this content.