Comparisons of magnitude estimation scaling of rock music by children, young adults, and older people

The present study concerned the perceptual processing of complex auditory s timuli in 10 children (M age = 8.1) as compared to 10 young adults (iM age = 19.3) and 10 older adult subjects (M age = 54.2). The auditory stimulus u sed was 10 sec. of ruck music (Led Zeppelin, 1969). All three groups provid ed numerical responses to nine intensities of the rock music stimulus (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 dB above threshold). Analysis showed that th e children reported a wider range of numerical responses than both adult gr oups. The mean numerical responses for the children ranged from .54 to 54.2 4. For the young adults the range was .76 to 11.37, and for the older subje cts it was 1.6 to 23.31. Results suggest that the children were not bound b y the same set of rules as the adults with regard to magnitude estimation s caling of the loudness of the rock music stimulus. Their internal scaling m echanisms appeared to be more flexible and broader based than those of the adults who participated in this study.