Categorical loudness perception in normal and hearing-impaired subjects: Conference Proceedings of the 16th International Congress on Acoustics and 135th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America

This study compared categorical loudness perception in three subject groups with 1 I subjects in each group: young (22 and 24 years) normal, older (43-60 years) normal, older (60 to 80 years) hearing impaired (thresholds in the range of 50 to 70 dB SPL at the test frequencies of 2 and 4 kHz). The subjects were asked to judge the loudness of warbled tones presented at various sound pressure levels in the following categories: Not audible, very soft, soft, comfortable, loud, and very loud. The Multivariate analyses of variance on the thresholds, and the very soft, soft, comfortable and loud categories revealed significant differences in loudness perception among the normal and the hearing-impaired subjects.