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Loudness constancy with varying sound source distance

Nature Neuroscience volume 4, pages 78–83 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

At a listener's ears, sound source power and sound source distance are confounded in measures of acoustic intensity, a physical property long thought to be the primary determinate of loudness. Although the relationship between sound source loudness and power is well known when source distance is fixed, relatively little is known about source loudness under conditions of varying distance. Here we show a robust loudness constancy, similar in many ways to visual size constancy, that results under distance-varying conditions that produce inaccurate estimates of source distance. Our results suggest that the auditory system does not require accurate distance estimates to judge source loudness, even when distance is variable. We offer an alternative explanation of loudness constancy based solely on a reverberant sound energy cue.

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Figure 1: Average loudness as a function of stimulus (diotic noise) intensity at the ear.
Figure 2: Average loudness as a function of virtual source distance for three different source power groupings within trial blocks: (+5, 0, −5), (+10, 0, −10) or (+10, −10, −30) dB.
Figure 3: Stimulus magnitude spectra (smoothed) for selected combinations of source distance and source power, as measured with a reference microphone in the absence of the listener.
Figure 4: Multiplicative constant values, k (from the power function fits shown in Fig. 2), as a function of source power.
Figure 5: Average apparent distance estimates as a function of physical source distance.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support for this work was provided by the NIH-NIDCD (DC00116), NIH-NEI (1F32EY07010-01), and NASA (Cooperative Agreement #NCC2-542). The authors wish to thank J. Loomis for discussions on perceptual constancy and comments on this article.

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  1. Pavel Zahorik

    Present address: Department of Psychology, University of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, 93106-9660, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, 53705, Wisconsin, USA

    Pavel Zahorik & Frederic L. Wightman

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Correspondence to Pavel Zahorik.

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Zahorik, P., Wightman, F. Loudness constancy with varying sound source distance. Nat Neurosci 4, 78–83 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/82931

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