L'Année Psychologique, 1983, .S3, 9-24

MÉMOIRES ORIGINAUX

Auditory Perception Laboratory,

Northeastern University, Boston, USA*

Laboratoire de Psychologie expérimentale

de l'Université de Paris V1 associé au CNRS**

Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique

du CNBS, Marseille***

RÉCUPÉRATION APRÈS ADAPTATION INDUITE

DE SONIE2

par Bertram Scharf*1 ***, Marie-Glaire Botte**

et Georges Ganévet***

SUMMARY : Recovery from induced loudness adaptation.

The method of successive magnitude estimation was used to study recovery from loudness adaptation induced by a contralateral intermittent tone. Three groups of 30 subjects heard a continuous 1000-Hz tone at 60 dB SPL in the right ear and an intermittent (500 ms on, 500 ms off) tone of the same frequency and level in the left ear. Every 20 s, the subject judged the momentary loudness of the continuous tone by assigning a number to it. In the presence of the intermittent tone, the loudness of the continuous tone decreased approximately 60 % within 3 min. Termination of the intermittent tone after 3 min. resulted in little recovery of loudness, which 5 min. later was still 50 % below its pre- adaptation value. Turning the continuous tone off and then back on resulted in an increase in its loudness — the

1. 28, rue Serpente, 75006 Paris.

2. Ces recherches ont été financées en partie par des bourses de I'otan, et par des crédits des National Institutes of Health (2 R OIN SO7270 et RRO 7143).