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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2015

Temporal weighting of loudness: Different psychophysical tasks reveal different evaluation strategies

Résumé

Over the last few years, psychophysical reverse correlation has been employed to characterize temporal weighting processes underlying loudness judgments of time-varying sounds [1–3]. Using sample discrimination tasks, in which observers were asked to discriminate one or more stimuli in loudness, several studies indicated the presence of non-uniform temporal weighting in loudness judgments. The first and, to a lesser extent, the last temporal portions of the stimuli were found to be weighted more heavily than the others; this was shown to reflect primacy and recency effects, respectively [2]. Can similar non-uniform temporal weightings mechanisms be found using other traditional psychophysical methods such as direct scaling methods? This question was addressed in the present study by comparing temporal weighting patterns underlying global loudness judgments between two types of psychophysical tasks: Level-Discrimination tasks (LD) and Absolute Magnitude Estimation tasks (AME). In the LD tasks, listeners were asked to classify the stimulus as soft or loud [2] (i.e., in a binary fashion) while in the AME tasks, they had to select a number that, in their impression, best represented the overall loudness of the stimulus. Two within-subjects experiments (N=7 in each experiment) were conducted with different conditions that allowed a control of potentially influential factors. Our hypothesis was that similar weighting patterns should be found in the two tasks, since the same internal variable (i.e., global loudness) is involved. In both tasks, we observed consistent non-uniform temporal weighting patterns. However, these patterns differed significantly between the two tasks. In particular, the temporal weighting patterns in the AME tasks displayed significant primacy effects but no recency, whereas in the LD tasks, only recency effects were obtained. Thus, this result did not support our initial hypothesis. However, we propose an explanation based on the differences in complexity between the evaluation processes underlying level-discrimination and magnitude estimation tasks, respectively. It is assumed that the type of decision (binary vs. continuous) might affect attentional sharing during stimuli presentation, thus modifying underlying temporal weighting processes. Therefore, we argue that the present results do not invalidate temporal weighting processes typically inferred from sample discrimination tasks, but rather suggest that the magnitude estimation tasks repeated over hundreds of trials might lead participants to adopt specific strategies minimizing the cost of their evaluation process. [1] B. Pedersen, W. Ellermeier, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 123, 963-972 (2008) [2] D. Oberfeld, T. Plank, Atten. Percept. & Psycho., 73(1), 189-208 (2011) [3] E. Ponsot, P. Susini, G. Saint Pierre, S. Meunier, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 134(4), EL321-EL326 (2013)
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Dates et versions

hal-01229541 , version 1 (16-11-2015)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01229541 , version 1

Citer

Emmanuel Ponsot, Patrick Susini, Daniel Oberfeld, Sabine Meunier. Temporal weighting of loudness: Different psychophysical tasks reveal different evaluation strategies. Fechner Day 2015, the 31st Annual Meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics, Aug 2015, Québec, Canada. ⟨hal-01229541⟩
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