Identification variability as a measure of loudness: an application to gender differences.

It is well known that discrimination response variability increases with stimulus intensity, closely related to Weber's Law. It is also an axiom that sensation magnitude increases with stimulus intensity. Following earlier researchers such as Thurstone, Garner, and Durlach and Braida, we explored a new method of exploiting these relationships to estimate the power function exponent relating sound pressure level to loudness, using the accuracy with which listeners could identify the intensity of pure tones. The log standard deviation of the normally distributed identification errors increases linearly with stimulus range in decibels, and the slope, a, of the regression is proportional to the loudness exponent, n. Interestingly, in a demonstration experiment, the loudness exponent estimated in this way is greater for females than for males.