Subject: Re: Wake-up levels for auditory warning? From: Daniel Levitin <levitin(at)INTERVAL.COM> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 08:11:36 -0800I would add to Steve McAdams' cogent remark that it does not just depend on individual differences between people, but that there are powerful contextual factors within a person influencing what kind of noise will wake them up. It wouldn't surprise me, for example, if Steve wakes up to his daughter's cough one floor below (maybe <20 dB at his ears?) but can easily sleep through the garbage collection truck (maybe ~40 dB at his ears). Broadbent's "pre-attentive" selectional filter is pretty good at giving us what is essentially a roving threshold in the intensity domain depending on the importance of the stimulus. ============================================================= Daniel J. Levitin, M.S., Ph.D. Phone: 650/842-6236 Interval Research Corp. levitin(at)interval.com 1801-C Page Mill Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 Lecturer, Department of Music Lecturer, Department of Psychology Lecturer, Department of Computer Science Visiting Scholar, Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics Stanford University http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/~levitin =============================================================