Relative ease of learning a decibel‐type scale versus a sone‐type scale Free

One group of subjects was trained to rate the loudness of tape‐recorded sounds on a decibel‐type scale, while another group learned to rate the same sounds on a sone‐type scale. In a pretest, subjects wrote magnitude estimates of 30 sounds. During training, subjects heard 60 sounds, each accompanied by the display of a placard giving the scale value. In the post‐test, subjects listened to another 30 sounds and wrote their estimates for the scale values which they had just learned. The 6‐sec sound samples were selected from 27 different spectra (both artificial and environmental) and ranged from 60 to 100 dB on the A‐weighted scale. They were presented simultaneously over loudspeakers in identical lecture rooms for each group. In the pretest the mean correlation coefficient for the decibel group was 0.72 (26 subjects) while the mean correlation for the sone group was 0.65 (26 subjects). In the post‐test the mean correlations were 0.88 and 0.85 for the two groups, respectively. Thus, although a sone‐type scale supposedly reflects subjective ratio relationships, it was not easier to learn than a decibel‐type scale.