Within-ear and across-ear identification of complex sounds
Irwin W. Pollack · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1985
The two ears of a listener are not perfectly matched. How does this influence the accuracy of identification of complex sounds? Random waveforms, with and without periodic replication, were presented to listeners over earphones. The listener's task was to select one of two matching signals which more nearly matched a target signal. When all signals shared the same periodicity, within-ear signal identification was substantially superior to across-ear signal identification. Robust interaural effects were observed over a wide range of signal durations and signal periodicities (including nonperiodic signals), under different conditions of signal uncertainty, under different sets of instructions, and with different sets of earphones. Monaural-binaural comparisons yield results intermediate with within-ear and across-ear comparisons. Weaker interaural effects are observed when the matching signals were of different periodicity. [Work supported by NSF.]