Effect of frequency region on binaural interference for interaural level differences

Abstract

Binaural interference occurs when a spectrally remote diotic interferer affects the ability to detect changes in interaural differences in the target. For interaural time differences, the magnitude of binaural interference depends on the target and interferer locations. For interaural level differences (ILDs), it is unclear if the magnitude of binaural interference depends on target and interferer location. ILDs are highly frequency dependent; ILDs become larger for increasing frequency for sources in the free field. Therefore, we hypothesized that binaural interference for ILDs would be frequency dependent, and that both target and interferer frequency would affect thresholds. In ten young normal-hearing listeners, we measured ILD discrimination thresholds using single tones, once with no interferer and then in the presence of a diotic interferer. We tested five frequencies: 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, and 8000 Hz. Each combination of target and interferer frequency was tested, resulting in 25 conditions. ILD...