Continuous loudness response to acoustic intensity dynamics in melodies: Effects of melodic contour, tempo, and tonality

Contextual effects on loudness judgments for sounds with continuous changes of intensity are reflected in nonauditory areas

“…Similarly, our results only partially conform to previous investigations studying ramp-specific effects on judgments of loudness. In line with previous studies that asked participants to judge loudness repeatedly or continuously throughout stimuli with continuous level changes (e.g., Canévet et al, 2003;Canévet & Scharf, 1990;Olsen et al, 2014;Schlauch, 1992;Susini et al, 2007;Teghtsoonian et al, 2000), loudness change was on average greater in response to down-ramps relative to up-ramps. Yet, our data also revealed an interaction between the ramp direction and the intensity region (see Figure 4, panel b): While down-ramps elicited greater loudness change at higher levels, the asymmetry was reversed at the lowest levels.…”

“…If, on the other hand, listeners are instructed to make judgments about their current loudness perception repeatedly or continuously throughout the stimulus, the loudness change inferred from these data (i.e., the difference between judgments at the beginning and end of each ramp) tends to be greater in response to down-ramps (termed as "decruitment," e.g., Canévet & Scharf, 1990;Canévet, Teghtsoonian, & Teghtsoonian, 2003;Olsen, Stevens, Dean, & Bailes, 2014;Schlauch, 1992;Susini, McAdams, & Smith, 2007;Teghtsoonian, Teghtsoonian, & Canévet, 2000). In an attempt to reconcile these two conflictive phenomena, it has been argued that judgments of global loudness change and judgments of momentary loudness may reflect different underlying mechanisms (Neuhoff, 1999).…”

“…Irrespective of this distinction, it has been deemed unlikely that the perceptual overestimation of up-or down-ramps can be fully explained by early sensory mechanisms such as temporal masking (Olsen & Stevens, 2012) or simple adaptation (Teghtsoonian et al, 2000), which typically evolves more gradually over longer time scales. Moreover, there is evidence that perceptual outcomes may be influenced by the order in which different ramps are presented (Olsen et al, 2010(Olsen et al, , 2014. Importantly, the focus of attention toward the acoustic stimulus seems to play a critical role in the decruitment caused by down-ramps (Schlauch, 1992).…”

“…Based on the psychoacoustic literature delineated above, we expected this composition to elicit strong contextual effects, and thereby significant divergence between presented levels and corresponding loudness judgments. Although it has been demonstrated that these effects can also be elicited by more natural sounds such as vowels, instrumental notes and melodies (Olsen et al, 2010(Olsen et al, , 2014, we opted for rather simple synthetical stimuli to avoid possible confounds due to changes of spectral content, lexical semantics or other associations. Using a cross-validation approach, we compared regression models which included presented levels or individual loudness estimates as explanatory variables in terms of their accuracy and robustness in predicting fMRI activation throughout the brain.…”

The Effects of Acoustic Intensity, Spectrum, and Duration on Global Loudness Change

“…Thus, the magnitude of loudness change is greater in response to down-ramps, relative to up-ramps, most likely because of ad own-ramp end-levell oudness 'softening' effect. This explanation for down-ramp decruitment has receiveds upport in ar elatively complex auditory context where up-ramps and down-ramps of intensity were embedded in short melodies [8]. However, whether sensory adaptation is the underlying mechanism is yet to be determined, and it is clear that cognitive factors such as directed attention makeas ignificant contribution to the magnitude of decruitment [9].…”