The Apparent Reduction of Loudness: A Repeat Experiment

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Abstract
An experiment of Laird, Taylor, and Wille (1932) showed that reduction in the intensity of a sound required to produce half-loudness is of the order of 20 db. Since this result is out of line with other studies in this field, an attempt was made to repeat the experiment with a similar piece of apparatus (2-A audiometer). The 1st attempt to copy the procedure of Laird, Taylor, and Wille gave results more like those usually obtained, namely, a required reduction for half-loudness of the order of 10 db. A 2d experiment, involving the use of comparison tones placed as much as 40 db below the standard, gave results more like those of Laird, Taylor, and Wille. The method they used appears to be overly sensitive to the range and order of presentation of the comparison stimuli.

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