Psychoacoustics in the United Kingdom in the period 1900 to 1950

Abstract

Much research in psychoacoustics during this period was conducted in the “Psychological Laboratory” in Cambridge (H. Bannister, A. F. Rawdon-Smith) and in Manchester (T. S. Littler, A. W. Ewing). Although Lord Rayleigh had published his influential duplex theory of sound localization in 1907, lingering doubts remained about whether interaural phase could truly be discriminated—rather, it had been proposed that somehow interaural phase differences were converted into interaural intensity differences. Bannister conducted a series of experiments to assess this idea and concluded that “binaural phase differences are appreciated in some manner which is distinct from the appreciation of binaural intensity differences.” Bannister also reported experiments on time-intensity trading in sound localization and reported that sometimes two images were perceived. Rawdon Smith and independently Littler and Ewing studied the phenomenon of auditory fatigue (temporary threshold shift, TTS). They showed that the maximum TTS produced by an intense fatiguing tone occurred for test tones with frequencies well above that of the fatiguing tone, a phenomenon that was repeatedly confirmed in later studies and that has only recently been explained. A common feature of the papers describing this work was a detailed description of the (often ingenious) apparatus that was developed to conduct the experiments.