Finger occlusion enables rapid switching between monaural and binaural listening
Evidence
It is commonplace in psychophysical testing to match the loudness of different stimuli by listening to them in alternation, but it is impractical to insert/remove an ear plug between one presentation interval and another. As a result comparisons are made over quite long time intervals. In contrast, a finger can be applied to the meatus in less than a second, so it is possible to perform a 2-interval, forced-choice procedure provided that the monaural interval is always the same one so that the listener can learn the routine of blocking one ear for the same interval of each trial. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1525
A limitation of previous studies is that the use of ear plugs and muffs means that different listening modes cannot be directly compared. It is commonplace in psychophysical testing to match the loudness of different stimuli by listening to them in alternation, but it is impractical to insert/remove an ear plug between one presentation interval and another. As a result comparisons are made over quite long time intervals. In contrast, a finger can be applied to the meatus in less than a second, so it is possible to perform a 2-interval, forced-choice procedure provided that the monaural interval is always the same one so that the listener can learn the routine of blocking one ear for the same interval of each trial. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1526
Categorization
- DEFINE: Explains the methodological insight that made direct within-trial loudness matching of monaural/binaural possible.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1525; Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1526