Comparative psychoacoustics

Psychophysical data on unspecialized mammals commonly used in auditory research were compiled from the literature, and an attempt was made to compare the hearing capacities of these species with man. Binaural hearing and sound localization were not considered. The most complete psychoacoustic data exist for chinchilla, cat, various primates, and the mouse. The existing data include audiograms, frequency and intensity discrimination thresholds, critical masking ratios, critical bandwidths, temporal summation functions at threshold, psychophysical tuning curves, gap detection thresholds, temporal modulation transfer functions, temporal discriminations, and auditory filter shapes. In general, the qualitative forms of most all psychoacoustic functions for these mammals are similar to those for man, and there is little reason to believe that the mechanisms underlying these capacities are different across mammals. Although the discriminative capacities of humans are generally more acute than those of non-humans, the database on the capacities of non-humans is not yet sufficient for systematic comparisons across species to be made with confidence.