Loudness enhancement and recalibration in hearing and touch
Poster

Jennifer Mailloux
John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine

Yoav Arieh
John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine

Lawrence E. Marks
John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine

     Abstract ID Number: 140
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: May 13, 2003

Abstract
A phenomenon known as ‘loudness enhancement’ has been reported in both hearing and touch: When a brief test tone (auditory or vibrotactile) is preceded (by less than about 100 ms) by a stronger conditioning tone, the perceived loudness of the test tone is enhanced substantially. Enhancement is measured by adjusting the loudness of a subsequent comparison tone to match the test tone, and it can be as great as 10 dB. Recently, it has been suggested (Scharf et al., 2002) that loudness enhancement in the auditory system is an artifact, that changes in loudness matches do not represent increases in the loudness of the test tone but instead represent reductions in the loudness of the comparison tone – a phenomenon called ‘recalibration’. Findings from our laboratory (Arieh & Marks, submitted) support this explanation. Is evidence for loudness enhancement in touch also an artifact of recalibration? Recently, we have begun to examine both loudness enhancement and recalibration using vibrotactile stimuli. Evidence obtained thus far suggests that it may not be possible to explain tactile enhancement in terms of recalibration.