title: Similar Impacts of the Interaural Delay and Interaural Correlation on Binaural Gap Detection.
abstract: The subjective representation of the sounds delivered to the two ears of a human listener is closely associated with the interaural delay and correlation of these two-ear sounds. When the two-ear sounds, e.g., arbitrary noises, arrive simultaneously, the single auditory image of the binaurally identical noises becomes increasingly diffuse, and eventually separates into two auditory images as the interaural correlation decreases. When the interaural delay increases from zero to several milliseconds, the auditory image of the binaurally identical noises also changes from a single image to two distinct images. However, measuring the effect of these two factors on an identical group of participants has not been investigated. This study examined the impacts of interaural correlation and delay on detecting a binaurally uncorrelated fragment (interaural correlation = 0) embedded in the binaurally correlated noises (i.e., binaural gap or break in interaural correlation). We found that the minimum duration of the binaural gap for its detection (i.e., duration threshold) increased exponentially as the interaural delay between the binaurally identical noises increased linearly from 0 to 8 ms. When no interaural delay was introduced, the duration threshold also increased exponentially as the interaural correlation of the binaurally correlated noises decreased linearly from 1 to 0.4. A linear relationship between the effect of interaural delay and that of interaural correlation was described for listeners participating in this study: a 1 ms increase in interaural delay appeared to correspond to a 0.07 decrease in interaural correlation specific to raising the duration threshold. Our results imply that a tradeoff may exist between the impacts of interaural correlation and interaural delay on the subjective representation of sounds delivered to two human ears.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing, PR China; Speech and Hearing Research Center, Key Laboratory on Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, PR China; Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
authors.forename: Lingzhi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing, PR China; Speech and Hearing Research Center, Key Laboratory on Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Zilong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing, PR China; Speech and Hearing Research Center, Key Laboratory on Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Lingxi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Speech and Hearing Research Center, Key Laboratory on Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Tianshu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.affiliation: Speech and Hearing Research Center, Key Laboratory on Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Xihong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing, PR China; Speech and Hearing Research Center, Key Laboratory on Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009622:Noise; D013017:Sound Localization / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult