Loudness-thermometer: Evidence for cognitive effects?

To illustrate for a broad public acoustic magnitudes, level-thermometers can be used which show e.g. on the lower end whispering leaves and on the upper end a jet aircraft. When using instead a loudness-thermometer, the sequence of sounds sometimes can be reversed compared to a level-thermometer. From an engineering point of view, these differences frequently can be traced back to differences in the spectral distribution. However, also some cognitive effects might play a role, e.g. that musical sounds are preferred in comparison to technical sounds. In order to get a handle on possible cognitive effects, a procedure was used which keeps the loudness-time function the same, but largely obscures the information about the sound source. The loudness of 19 musical, natural, and technical sounds in both original and processed version was scaled by a magnitude estimation procedure. The information about the sound source, i.e. whether or not the sound source could be identified, had little effect on the loudness rating. In line with data from the literature, these results could be interpreted that cognitive effects like the recognition of the sound source might play a minor role in loudness evaluation. However, in some cases, the identification of the sound source may considerably influence the rating of its annoyance.