The measurement of loudness in individual children and adults by absolute magnitude estimation and cross-modality matching

Twelve adults and 11 children (age range 4-7 years) performed absolute magnitude estimation of the apparent lengths of lines and the loudnesses of 1000-Hz tones as well as cross-modality matching between loudness and apparent line length. Consistent with the notion that children and adults have similar impressions of loudness, there were no major differences between the absolute magnitude estimation (AME) and cross-modality matching (CMM) data of the adults and children. A direct comparison between the exponents for loudness by AME and CMM was made when a correction factor was employed to eliminate the effects of idiosyncratic use of numbers from the AME exponents. The results support the hypothesis that, with proper instructions, both children and adults can judge stimuli on an absolute scale. Specifically, for 9 out of 12 adults and 9 out of 11 children, lines and tones assigned the same number in absolute magnitude estimation were judged to be subjectively equal in cross-modality matching.