Within- versus cross-channel mechanisms in detection of envelope phase disparity

These experiments were designed to examine the mechanism of detection of phase disparity in the envelopes of two sinusoidally amplitude-modulated (AM) sinusoids. Specifically, they were performed to determine whether detection of envelope phase disparity was consistent with processing within a single channel in which the AM tones were simply added. In the first condition, with an 8-Hz modulation frequency, phase-disparity thresholds increased sharply with an initial increase in separation of the carrier frequencies. They then remained approximately constant when the separation was an octave or above. In the second condition, with carrier pairs of 1 and 2 kHz or 1 and 3.2 kHz and a modulation frequency of 8 Hz, thresholds were little affected as the level of one carrier was decreased relative to the other. With a modulation frequency of 128 Hz, for most subjects there was more of an effect of level disparity on thresholds. In the third condition, when the modulation frequency was 8 Hz, subjects showed relatively constant thresholds whether the signals were presented monotically, dichotically, or dichotically with low- and high-pass noise. Dichotic thresholds were typically higher than monotic when the modulation frequency was 128 Hz. These results suggest that it is not necessary to have information available within a single additive channel to detect envelope phase disparity. In certain circumstances, a comparison across channels may be used to detect such disparities.