Lateralization produced by envelope-based interaural temporal disparities of high-frequency, raised-sine stimuli: Empirical data and modeling

Abstract

An acoustic pointing task was used to measure extents of laterality produced by ongoing interaural temporal disparities (ITDs) conveyed by the envelopes of 4-kHz-centered raised-sine stimuli while varying, parametrically, their peakedness, depth of modulation, and frequency of modulation. One purpose of the study was to determine whether such manipulations would produce changes in laterality logically consistent with those found for ITD-discrimination thresholds reported by Bernstein and Trahiotis [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 125, 3234-3242 (2009)]. The data obtained revealed that they did in that (1) increasing depth of modulation, peakedness, or frequency of modulation between 32 and 128 Hz produced smaller threshold ITDs and greater laterality and (2) increasing frequency of modulation to 256 Hz produced modest increases in threshold ITDs and modest decreases in laterality. The extents of laterality measured were successfully accounted for via an augmentation of the cross-correlation-based "position-variable" modeling approach developed by Stern and Shear [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100, 2278-2288 (1996)] to account for ITD-based extents of laterality obtained at low spectral frequencies.