Lateralization of coherent and incoherent targets added to a diotic background

Lateralization responses to noise targets were obtained in a diotic noise background. On each trial, a noise target was added to the background noise in one earphone. Subjects were required to identify the earphone containing the target. Noise targets were either coherent or incoherent with the background. The long-term power spectrum of the incoherent target was identical to that of the background noise, and its amplitude was adjusted so that the addition of either the coherent or incoherent target to the background produced the same average increment in power. When 50-ms noise targets were presented in the middle of a 750-ms diotic background, lateralization thresholds were lower for the incoherent targets. The advantage with incoherent targets was shown to depend on the temporal relationships between target and masker. Superior performance with incoherent targets is inconsistent with predictions based on an analysis of interaural phase and amplitude differences. Models based on interaural subtraction, on the other hand, are able to account for the lateralization advantage shown by incoherent targets but are unable to account for the variations in threshold produced by altering the temporal relationships between target and masker.