IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0223075.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Temporal weights in loudness: Investigation of the effects of background noise and sound level

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Fischenich
  • Jan Hots
  • Jesko Verhey
  • Daniel Oberfeld

Abstract

Previous research has consistently shown that for sounds varying in intensity over time, the beginning of the sound is of higher importance for the perception of loudness than later parts (primacy effect). However, in all previous studies, the target sounds were presented in quiet, and at a fixed average sound level. In the present study, temporal loudness weights for a time-varying narrowband noise were investigated in the presence of a continuous bandpass-filtered background noise and the average sound levels of the target stimuli were varied across a range of 60 dB. Pronounced primacy effects were observed in all conditions and there were no significant differences between the temporal weights observed in the conditions in quiet and in background noise. Within the conditions in background noise, there was a significant effect of the sound level on the pattern of weights, which was mainly caused by a slight trend for increased weights at the end of the sounds (“recency effect”) in the condition with lower average level. No such effect was observed for the in-quiet conditions. Taken together, the observed primacy effect is largely independent of masking as well as of sound level. Compatible with this conclusion, the observed primacy effects in quiet and in background noise can be well described by an exponential decay function using parameters based on previous studies. Simulations using a model for the partial loudness of time-varying sounds in background noise showed that the model does not predict the observed temporal loudness weights.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Fischenich & Jan Hots & Jesko Verhey & Daniel Oberfeld, 2019. "Temporal weights in loudness: Investigation of the effects of background noise and sound level," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(11), pages 1-19, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0223075
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223075
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223075
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223075&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0223075?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zohar Z Bronfman & Noam Brezis & Marius Usher, 2016. "Non-monotonic Temporal-Weighting Indicates a Dynamically Modulated Evidence-Integration Mechanism," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(2), pages 1-21, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard D Lange & Ankani Chattoraj & Jeffrey M Beck & Jacob L Yates & Ralf M Haefner, 2021. "A confirmation bias in perceptual decision-making due to hierarchical approximate inference," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(11), pages 1-30, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0223075. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.