PSYC 215 Chapter 5: Week 5.docx

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 215
• Professor: Semas Weech

Document Summary

Techniques to compare the loudness of sounds: loudness matching: subject adjusts the intensity of a sound (comparison stimulus) until it sounds as loud as a standard stimulus, equal loudness contour curve plotting the spls at different frequencies that produce a loudness match with a reference sound at a fixed frequency and spl, equal loudness contours tend to follow the absolute threshold curve at lower standard intensities but flatten out at higher intensities, at lower standard intensities, lower frequency sounds must be set to a high intensity to seem equal in intensity to high frequency sounds, loudness scaling equal loudness contours can compare the loudness of different sounds but don"t explain how loudness increases (scales) with intensity, ask subject to assign numbers to different sounds at different intensities, loudness does not increase linearly with intensity obeys a power law where sensory magnitude grows in proportion to stimulus intensity raised to a power.