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Lateralization of large interaural delays
1University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford, United Kingdom.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|September 24, 1998
Summary
Listeners can distinguish sound laterality even with large interaural time delays (ITDs). This ability extends beyond typical free-field conditions, particularly with filtered sounds, revealing robust auditory processing capabilities.
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception
- Psychoacoustics
- Binaural hearing
Background:
- Interaural time delays (ITDs) are crucial cues for sound localization.
- Understanding the limits of ITD processing is essential for explaining auditory spatial perception.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the maximum interaural time delays (ITDs) listeners can interpret for sound laterality.
- To determine how high-pass filtering affects the discrimination of large ITDs.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Measured just-noticeable differences (jnds) for ITDs up to 3000 microseconds using an adaptive procedure.
- Experiment 2: Assessed left/right discrimination for ITDs up to 10,000 microseconds with varying high-pass cutoff frequencies (0-3000 Hz).
Main Results:
- Just-noticeable differences (jnds) for ITDs increased with reference ITD, then rose sharply and plateaued.
- Good left/right discrimination was achieved for broadband and 500 Hz high-pass filtered stimuli up to 10,000 microseconds ITD.
- Discrimination remained significant for ITDs up to 3000 microseconds even with higher high-pass cutoffs.
Conclusions:
- Auditory laterality cues are discriminable at much larger ITDs than typically encountered in free-field listening.
- This discrimination is robust even without low-frequency information (below 3 kHz).
- Findings suggest a broader capacity for processing spatial auditory information than previously assumed.