Perceived loudness integrates sound over a roughly one-second running window

Evidence

The impression of loudness is not instant. Presented with a sound turned on suddenly but of constant intensity thereafter, our impression is that its loudness is actually growing over the course of the first second or so. In fact, we apparently use a running window of averaging, about a second long, to estimate loudness. Interestingly, tones that start abruptly and fall off, like a piano note, derive their impression of loudness from the attack—that is, the decay seems louder if the attack is loud, even if the decay is the same as another tone with a softer attack. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2007

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why a one-second integration window? Is that tied to a neural or perceptual mechanism worth chasing?
• XREF: The attack-determines-loudness phenomenon parallels psychoacoustic masking and the chapter on pitch/timbre perception, plus the general idea of temporal integration in hearing from the soundscape book’s silence-timing theme.