Auditory psychophysical scaling exposure effects: magnitude estimation and cross-modal matching.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate possible effects of exposure upon suprathreshold psychological responses when auditory magnitude estimation and cross-modal matching with audition as the standard are conducted within the same experiment. Four groups of 10 subjects each whose over-all age range was 18 to 23 yr. were employed. During the cross-modal matching task the Groups 1 and 2 subjects adjusted a vibrotactile stimulus presented to the dorsal surface of the tongue and the Groups 3 and 4 subjects adjusted a vibrotactile stimulus presented to the thenar eminence of the right hand to match binaurally presented auditory stimuli. The magnitude-estimation task was conducted before the cross-modal matching task for Groups 1 and 3 and the cross-modal matching task was conducted before the magnitude-estimation task for Groups 2 and 4. The psychophysical methods of magnitude estimation and cross-modal matching showed no effect of one upon the other when used in the same experiment.