The effects of duration, frequency, and loudness upon the reproduction of temporal intervals

Subjects (five normal hearing graduate students in the Department of Audiology) were asked to reproduce temporal intervals of 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 sec. The intervals were filled with pure tones at frequencies of 250, 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz and at loudness levels of 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 phons. The reproductions were transformed into the ratio DT/T, where DT represents the difference-time between the stimulus duration and the duration of the reproduction, and T represents the stimulus duration. It was found that neither frequency nor loudness had any significant effect upon the ability to reproduce the durations. The only significant variable was duration. There were no significant interactions among the variables. On the average, the durations of 1 and 3 sec were overestimated and the durations of 7 and 9 sec were overestimated. The duration of 5 sec was neither overestimated nor underestimated, the indifference point falling at 4.90 sec.