In a loudness bisection task, subjects varied one sound to lie halfway between two given sounds in terms of loudness. The two given sounds were varied from 30 to 90 dB in a 4 by 9 factorial design. Functional measurement methods based on monotone analysis provided good support for the bisection model, and yielded a loudness scale with an exponent of about .3, except for a falloff at lower intensities. Two other tasks, judging average loudness and difference in loudness of the two given sounds, yielded mixed results. In Experiment 2, in particular, the differencing judgments were not additive, even under monotone transformation. These analyses also indicated that previous applications of monotone analysis have typically lacked adequate power to allow any conclusion about the operative model. Overall, the present bisection scale agrees with Garner's lambda scale, and the present theoretical approach agrees with that of Garner in its emphasis on algebraic models as a foundation for psychological measurement.The quality of loudness has good reasons for being a primary focus of psychophysical measurement. It has enormous dynamic range, in contrast to skin temperature or pressure. It is an energetic, sensory dimension, in contrast to length. It has nearly the ecological importance of brightness, but not nearly the complications from adaptation. And it is experimentally flexible and easy to control. For these and other reasons, loudness has become a primary test case for theories of psychophysical measurement.The method of bisection is attractive because it rests on sensory comparison and avoids artificial response language. If the subject's bisection response was indeed at the sensory midpoint, then a simple procedure of successive bisection would yield a linear (equal-interval) scale of sensation. Two arbitrary initial stimuli would be called 0 and 100. Their bisector would then have the value 50, two further bisections would yield the 25 and 75 points, four further bisections would yield the 12.5, 37.5, 62.5, This work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH-07809 to the first author, and by National Science Foundation Grant BMS 74-19124 to the second author. A preliminary report of this work was presented at the XXI International Congress of Psychology, Paris, July 1976. We wish to thank Alan Barnebey for help with apparatus and computing, Cheryl Smart for programming and managing the experiments, Clifford Butzin and Anthony Harris for advice and assistance in data analysis, and Edward Alf for developing the HP-67 program used for fitting power functions. Requests for reprints may be sent to Edward Carterette, Psychology, University of California. Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90024, or to Norman Anderson, Psychology C-009, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093. and 87.5 points, and so on, to as fine a division as desired. Granted that the bisection response is at the sensory midpoint, these numbers would constitute a linear scale of loudness.But the method of ...