title: Temporal weighting functions for interaural time and level differences. IV. Effects of carrier frequency.
abstract: Temporal variation in listeners' sensitivity to interaural time and level differences (ITD and ILD, respectively) was measured for sounds of different carrier frequency using the temporal weighting function (TWF) paradigm [Stecker and Hafter (2002) J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112,1046-1057]. Listeners made lateralization judgments following brief trains of filtered impulses (Gabor clicks) presented over headphones with overall ITD and/or ILD ranging from ±500 μs ITD and/or ±5 dB ILD across trials. Individual clicks within each train varied by an additional ±100 μs ITD or ±2 dB ILD to allow TWF calculation by multiple regression. In separate conditions, TWFs were measured for carrier frequencies of 1, 2, 4, and 8 kHz. Consistent with past studies, TWFs demonstrated high weight on the first click for stimuli with short interclick interval (ICI = 2 ms), but flatter weighting for longer ICI (5-10 ms). Some conditions additionally demonstrated greater weight for clicks near the offset than near the middle of the train. Results support a primary role of the auditory periphery in emphasizing onset and offset cues in rapidly modulated low-frequency sounds. For slower modulations, sensitivity to ongoing high-frequency ILD and low-frequency ITD cues appears subject to recency effects consistent with the effects of leaky temporal integration of binaural information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 1215 21st Avenue South, Nashville, Tennessee 37232.
authors.forename: G Christopher
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Stecker
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D010898:Pitch Perception; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013017:Sound Localization; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013998:Time Perception; D055815:Young Adult