title: Contextual processing of multidimensional and unidimensional auditory stimuli.
abstract: Stimulus context (the distribution of stimulus values) can strongly affect both perception and judgment. In 14 experiments, the method of magnitude estimation revealed 2 fundamentally different kinds of context effect in loudness. An assimilative effect dominated when stimuli varied unidimensionally (in intensity only). But a contrasting, or adaptation-like, effect dominated when stimuli varied multidimensionally (in frequency and intensity). In Experiment 15, direct loudness comparison revealed a potent, adaptational process specific to the signal frequency. Taken together, these and other results are compatible with the view that loudness perception and judgment reflect the net outcome of 2 different contextual processes: a relatively early (though probably not peripheral) process of perceptual adaptation and a later process of response-dependent assimilation.
authors: John B. Pierce Laboratory, New Haven, Connecticut 06519.
authors: L E
authors: LE
authors: Marks
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D010898:Pitch Perception; D011571:Psychoacoustics