Loudness of Speaking: The Effect of Heard Stimuli on Spoken Responses

Twenty‐five subjects heard recorded words at five levels of loudness. The subjects heard the recorded stimuli over headsets and were asked to repeat the words in a normal manner. The loudnesses with which the repetitions were made were noted from a Sound Level Meter, the microphone for which was eight inches in front of the speaker's lips. The same procedure was followed, using as stimulus materials sentence questions that required obvious one‐word responses. In both instances, the subjects spoke with a loudness proportional to the intensity of the signal. In a follow‐up experiment, subjects were instructed that normal behavior was to increase vocal loudness in keeping with signal strength and asked to maintain a constant level of loudness irrespective of the intensity of the signal. The subjects were unable to follow these instructions.