Auditory memory and evaluation of environmental sounds

A series of experiments were conducted concerning the memory of environmental sounds. Twelve kinds of sound were presented with soft background noise of about 6 min to participants. They were asked to recall or recognize the sound sources and to judge the loudness of the recalled or recognized sounds some period after they listened to the sounds. The recalled or recognized loudness was examined in relation to the length of the period between the presentation of sounds and the judgment of loudness, the method to measure the memory, LAeq of each sound source, etc. The results suggest that it is possible to judge the loudness of the memorized sounds and that the judgments seems reliable.