Lateral-position-based models of interaural discrimination.

Abstract

This letter investigates the hypothesis that lateral position is the only cue available for interaural discrimination experiments using 500-Hz stimuli. The discussion of this hypothesis is in the context of comparisons of the experimental data to predictions of the "position-variable" model of binaural interaction. The model predicts the mean and variance of the subjective lateral position of stimuli used in the discrimination experiments, assuming that discrimination performance is based on optimal processing of this subjective position. To the extent that the laterality predictions of the model are accurate, data that are inconsistent with its predictions would also be problematical for any model based on the subjective laterality of a single binaural image. The predictions (at least qualitatively) describe much of the observed experimental data, including a number of results that have not been addressed by any previous theory. Nevertheless, the observed performance is significantly better than the corresponding predictions for three types of experiments in which the utility of the position cue has been eliminated by experimental design. We believe that our results indicate that changes in lateral position are the primary cue in most interaural discrimination experiments, but that secondary attributes of the perceptual images can be useful when performance based on position alone would be poor.