Inter-Listener variability in sound localization partly reflects peripheral coding efficiency that precedes binaural computation.

Evidence

Our earlier study attempted to evaluate the relative contributions of these processing stages to the inter-listener variability in lateralization performance, by comparing individual listeners’ monaural sensitivities to the temporal structure and intensity of a sound stimulus with their ITD and ILD sensitivities (Ochi et al. 2014 ). The results showed significant correlation of ILD discrimination thresholds with thresholds for monaural level-increment detection task. This could be interpreted as indicating that the inter-individual differences in ILD sensitivity could be (partially) accounted for by the level coding efficiency at stages before binaural interaction. Similarly, ITD discrimination thresholds were found to correlate with the listeners’ sensitivities to the temporal structure of monaural stimuli, when the stimuli were in high frequency range (around 4000 Hz). However, we failed to find a positive correlation for stimuli in low-frequency range (around 1100 Hz). — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1026

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the physiology-cognition reading thread: peripheral monaural coding efficiency shaping higher binaural percepts.