Repeated short tones reach steady threshold when repetition rate exceeds 5 per second

Evidence

The dependence on repetition rate shows similar functions predicted by the assumption that the hearing system integrates the sound intensity over 200 ms. The 200-ms interval corresponds to a repetition rate of 5 Hz. Therefore, the thresholds are independent of repetition rate for repetition rates smaller than 5 Hz, but decrease for larger repetition rates until finally the steady-state condition is reached. This occurs for 5-ms tone bursts at a repetition rate of 200 Hz. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 493

Categorization

• XREF: The 200 ms window and 5 Hz cutoff parallels temporal summation in other sensory/detection literature and neurophysiological integration time constants.