Spatial judgments are often dominated by low-frequency binaural cues and onset cues when binaural cues vary across the spectrum and duration, respectively, of a brief sound. This study combined these dimensions to assess the spectrotemporal weighting of binaural information. Listeners discriminated target interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD) carried by the onset, offset, or full duration of a 4-kHz Gabor click train with a 2-ms period in the presence or absence of a diotic 500-Hz interferer tone. ITD and ILD thresholds were significantly elevated by the interferer in all conditions and by a similar amount to previous reports for static cues. Binaural interference was dramatically greater for ITD targets lacking onset cues compared to onset and full-duration conditions. Binaural interference for ILD targets was similar across dynamic-cue conditions. These effects mirror the baseline discriminability of dynamic ITD and ILD cues [Stecker and Brown. (2010). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 3092–3103], consistent with stronger interference for less-robust/higher-variance cues. The results support the view that binaural cue integration occurs simultaneously across multiple variance-weighted dimensions, including time and frequency.

1.
Bernstein
,
L. R.
, and
Trahiotis
,
C.
(
2002
).
“Enhancing sensitivity to interaural delays at high frequencies using ‘transposed stimuli’,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
112
,
1026
1036
.
2.
Bernstein
,
L. R.
, and
Trahiotis
,
C.
(
2004
). “
The apparent immunity of high-frequency ‘transposed’ stimuli to low-frequency binaural interference
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
116
,
3062
3069
.
3.
Bernstein
,
L. R.
, and
Trahiotis
,
C.
(
2009
). “
How sensitivity to ongoing interaural temporal disparities is affected by manipulations of temporal features of the envelopes of high-frequency stimuli
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
125
,
3234
3242
.
4.
Best
,
V.
,
Gallun
,
F. J.
,
Carlile
,
S.
, and
Shinn-Cunningham
,
B. G.
(
2007
). “
Binaural interference and auditory grouping
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
121
,
1070
1076
.
5.
Brainard
,
D. H.
(
1997
). “
The psychophysics toolbox
,”
Spat. Vis.
10
,
433
436
.
6.
Buell
,
T. N.
, and
Hafter
,
E. R.
(
1988
). “
Discrimination of interaural differences of time in the envelopes of high-frequency signals: Integration times
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
84
,
2063
2066
.
7.
Buell
,
T. N.
, and
Hafter
,
E. R.
(
1991
). “
Combination of binaural information across frequency bands
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
90
,
1894
1900
.
8.
Buell
,
T. N.
, and
Trahiotis
,
C.
(
1993
). “
Interaural temporal discrimination using two sinusoidally amplitude-modulated, high-frequency tones: Conditions of summation and interference
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
93
,
480
4807
.
9.
Croghan
,
N. B. H.
, and
Grantham
,
D. W.
(
2010
). “
Binaural interference in the free field
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
127
,
3085
3091
.
10.
David
,
E.
,
Guttman
,
N.
, and
Bergeijk
,
W. V.
(
1959
). “
Binaural interaction of high-frequency complex stimuli
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
31
,
774
782
.
11.
Diedesch
,
A. C.
, and
Stecker
,
G. C.
(
2015
). “
Temporal weighting of binaural information at low frequencies: Discrimination of dynamic interaural time and level differences
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
138
,
125
133
.
12.
Efron
,
B.
, and
Tibshirani
,
R.
(
1986
). “
Bootstrap methods for standard errors, confidence intervals, and other measures of statistical accuracy
,”
Statist. Sci.
1
,
54
75
.
13.
Fox
,
J.
(
2008
).
Applied Regression Analysis and Generalized Linear Models
(
Sage, Thousand Oaks
,
CA
), Chap. 21, pp.
587
606
.
14.
Freyman
,
R. L.
,
Zurek
,
P. M.
,
Balakrishnan
,
U.
, and
Chiang
,
Y. C.
(
1997
). “
Onset dominance in lateralization
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
101
,
1649
1659
.
15.
Hafter
,
E. R.
(
1977
). “
Lateralization model and the role of time-intensity tradings in binaural masking: Can the data be explained by a time-only hypothesis?
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
62
,
633
635
.
16.
Hafter
,
E. R.
, and
Buell
,
T. N.
(
1990
). “
Restarting the adapted binaural system
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
88
,
806
812
.
17.
Hafter
,
E. R.
, and
Dye
,
R. H. J.
(
1983
). “
Detection of interaural differences of time in trains of high-frequency clicks as a function of interclick interval and number
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
73
,
644
651
.
18.
Hafter
,
E. R.
, and
Jeffress
,
L. A.
(
1968
). “
Two-image lateralization of tones and clicks
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
44
,
563
569
.
19.
Harris
,
G. G.
(
1960
). “
Binaural interactions of impulsive stimuli and pure tones
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
32
,
685
692
.
20.
Heller
,
L. M.
, and
Richards
,
V. M.
(
2010
). “
Binaural interference in lateralization thresholds for interaural time and level differences
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
128
,
310
319
.
21.
Heller
,
L. M.
, and
Trahiotis
,
C.
(
1995
). “
Interference in detection of interaural delay in a sinusoidally amplitude-modulated tone produced by a second, spectrally remote sinusoidally amplitude-modulated tone
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
97
,
1808
1816
.
22.
Hill
,
N. I.
, and
Darwin
,
C. J.
(
1996
). “
Lateralization of a perturbed harmonic: Effects of onset asynchrony and mistuning
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
100
,
2352
2364
.
23.
John
,
M. S.
,
Dimitrijevic
,
A.
, and
Picton
,
T. W.
(
2002
). “
Auditory steady-state responses to exponential modulation envelopes
,”
Ear Hear.
23
,
106
117
.
24.
Klein-Hennig
,
M.
,
Dietz
,
M.
,
Hohmann
,
V.
, and
Ewert
,
S. D.
(
2011
). “
The influence of different segments of the ongoing envelope on sensitivity to interaural time delays
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
129
,
3856
3872
.
25.
McFadden
,
D.
, and
Pasanen
,
E. G.
(
1976
). “
Lateralization of high frequencies based on interaural time differences
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
59
,
634
639
.
26.
Monaghan
,
J. J. M.
,
Bleeck
,
S.
, and
McAlpine
,
D.
(
2015
). “
Sensitivity to envelope interaural time differences at high modulation rates
,”
Trends Hear.
19
,
2331216515619331
.
27.
Saberi
,
K.
(
1996
). “
Observer weighting of interaural delays in filtered impulses
,”
Percept. Psychophys.
58
,
1037
1046
.
28.
Stecker
,
G. C.
(
2010
). “
Trading of interaural differences in high-rate Gabor click trains
,”
Hear. Res.
268
,
202
212
.
29.
Stecker
,
G. C.
(
2014
). “
Temporal weighting functions for interaural time and level differences. IV. Effects of carrier frequency
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
136
,
3221
3232
.
30.
Stecker
,
G. C.
, and
Bibee
,
J. M.
(
2014
). “
Nonuniform temporal weighting of interaural time differences in 500 Hz tones
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
135
,
3541
3547
.
31.
Stecker
,
G. C.
, and
Brown
,
A. D.
(
2010
). “
Temporal weighting of binaural cues revealed by detection of dynamic interaural differences in high-rate Gabor click trains
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
127
,
3092
3103
.
32.
Stecker
,
G. C.
, and
Brown
,
A. D.
(
2012
). “
Onset- and offset-specific effects in interaural level difference discrimination
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
132
,
1573
1580
.
33.
Stecker
,
G. C.
, and
Gallun
,
F. J.
(
2012
).
“Binaural hearing, sound localization, and spatial hearing,”
in
Translational Perspectives in Auditory Neuroscience: Normal Aspects of Hearing
, edited by
K. L.
Tremblay
and
R. F.
Burkard
(
Plural
,
San Diego CA
), Chap. 14, pp.
387
437
.
34.
Stecker
,
G. C.
, and
Hafter
,
E. R.
(
2002
). “
Temporal weighting in sound localization
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
112
,
1046
1057
.
35.
Stellmack
,
M. A.
, and
Dye
,
R. H.
, Jr.
(
1993
). “
The combination of interaural information across frequencies: The effects of number and spacing of components, onset asynchrony, and harmonicity
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
93
,
2933
2947
.
36.
Stellmack
,
M. A.
, and
Lutfi
,
R. A.
(
1996
). “
Observer weighting of concurrent binaural information
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
99
,
579
587
.
37.
Tobias
,
J. V.
, and
Schubert
,
E. R.
(
1959
). “
Effective onset duration of auditory stimuli
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
31
,
1595
1605
.
38.
Trahiotis
,
C.
, and
Bernstein
,
L. R.
(
1990
). “
Detectability of interaural delays over select spectral regions: Effects of flanking noise
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
87
,
810
813
.
39.
van de Par
,
S.
, and
Kohlrausch
,
A.
(
1997
). “
A new approach to comparing binaural masking level differences at low and high frequencies
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
101
,
1671
1680
.
40.
Woods
,
W. S.
, and
Colburn
,
H. S.
(
1992
). “
Test of a model of auditory object formation using intensity and interaural time difference discrimination
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
91
,
2894
2902
.
You do not currently have access to this content.