LAUSR

A novel method for measuring selective attention to different perceptual dimensions in a discrimination task is evaluated. The standard consists of three equal-intensity tones centered at 1000 Hz with 10 Hz separations. The signal is an intensity increment for the central tone. Discriminations can be based on either differences in loudness or roughness. In three conditions, listeners are instructed to attend to roughness when the signal and standard are adjusted to have the same energy, attend to roughness without the equal-energy constraint, or attend to loudness. Compliance to instructions is assessed by adding small level perturbations to stimuli and estimating a set of decision weights. Theoretically, attention to loudness yields three positive weights with equal magnitude, whereas attention to roughness yields a positive weight for the central tone and negative weights with half the magnitude for the two side tones. Estimated weights In the loudness and equal-energy roughness conditions are consisten...