Book Description
Introduction. Previous studies report gender differences in the auditory system; however, none reports gender differences in auditory adaptation, the decrease in perceived loudness to protracted auditory stimulation. Experiments. We applied a 6-min tone to a participant's adapting ear. Each minute on the minute, participants adjusted the intensity of an iso-frequency tone in the contralateral control ear until both tones sounded equally loud. We calculated adaptation as the intensity difference between a reference level and that registered at later time points. Results. At each time pint, the magnitude of femaile adaptation was greater than that of males. Adaptation was found to oscillate with time. Model. We created a model of loudness for each ear, and used it to obtain values of a psychophysical parameter. Hypothesis. The magnitude of loudness adaptation will differ between genders when we administer pure tones of constant intensity and frequency to participants.