On the relations of intensity jnd’s to loudness and neural noise

Abstract

It is shown experimentally that, in contradiction of the fundamental concept of Fechner’s law, the intensity jnd for auditory sinusoidal signals follows loudness, rather than its derivative with respect to sound intensity. The evidence is obtained by comparing the jnd’s of a population with normal hearing to those of a population with hearing loss accompanied by loudness recruitment. Although the recruitment increases the slope of the loudness function, the jnd’s of both populations were found to be practically equal when the loudnesses were equal. The phenomenon is accounted for mathematically by assuming that psychophysically relevant neural noise depends not only on the magnitude of loudness, but also on its derivative with respect to sound intensity. A related derivation accounts for the near miss to Weber’s law.