Measures of intensity discrimination.

Several different measures have been employed in the literature to describe performance by human observers in intensity discrimination tasks. These measures include the difference limen (DL) or "delta I in dB," the Weber fraction (delta I/I), and signal-to-masker ratio (Ps/Pm). This article describes the mathematical relationship among these measures for conditions in which masker and signal are (1) sinusoids of the same frequency; (2) sinusoids of different frequencies; and (3) noise waveforms. We provide a table which contains values of each of these measures, describing equivalent performance over the typical range obtained in most intensity discrimination experiments. We express some cautions that should be observed in choosing and reporting particular measures of intensity discrimination.

[1]  W. Yost,et al.  Masking of tones by tones and of noise by noise , 1974 .

[2]  N. Viemeister,et al.  Intensity discrimination of pulsed sinusoids: the effects of filtered noise. , 1972, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[3]  E. de Boer,et al.  Intensity Discrimination of Fluctuating Signals , 1966 .

[4]  F. Wightman.  Detection of binaural tones as a function of masker bandwidth. , 1971, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[5]  G. A. Miller,et al.  Sensitivity to Changes in the Intensity of White Noise and Its Relation to Masking and Loudness , 1947 .

[6]  E. Osman,et al.  Weber’s law, the “near miss,” and binaural detection , 1980, Perception & psychophysics.

[7]  L. A. Jeffress,et al.  Differences of Interaural Phase and Level in Detection and Lateralization: 250 Hz , 1971 .

[8]  J Nachmias,et al.  Intensity discrimination with gated and continuous sinusoids. , 1979, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[9]  Masker level and sinusoidal-signal detection. , 1965, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[10]  J. Licklider,et al.  Oscillographic Scatterplots Illustrating Various Degrees of Correlation. , 1948, Science.

[11]  D. M. Green,et al.  Auditory Detection of a Noise Signal , 1960 .

[12]  R. Luce,et al.  Neural coding and psychophysical discrimination data. , 1974, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[13]  E. de Boer,et al.  Masking and Discrimination , 1966 .

[14]  R. R. Riesz.  Differential Intensity Sensitivity of the Ear for Pure Tones , 1928 .

[15]  L. A. Jeffress,et al.  Differences of interaural phase and level in detection and lateralization: 1000 and 2000 Hz. , 1972, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[16]  W. M. Rabinowitz,et al.  Intensity perception. VI. Summary of recent data on deviations from Weber's law for 1000-Hz tone pulses. , 1976, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[17]  David M. Green,et al.  Effects of Background Noise on Auditory Detection of Noise Bursts , 1962 .

[18]  F L Wightman,et al.  On-frequency masking with continuous sinusoids. , 1971, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[19]  Vern O. Knudsen.  Sensibility of the Ear to Small Differences in Intensity and Frequency , 1922 .

[20]  D. Raab,et al.  Auditory intensity discrimination with bursts of reproducible noise. , 1975, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[21]  L. A. Jeffress,et al.  Masking of tone by tone as a function of duration. , 1974, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[22]  Edward Cudahy,et al.  Intensity discrimination for pulsed sinusoids of various frequencies , 1974 .