Sound localization under perturbed binaural hearing.

Abstract

This paper reports on the acute effects of a monaural plug on directional hearing in the horizontal (azimuth) and vertical (elevation) planes of human listeners. Sound localization behavior was tested with rapid head-orienting responses toward brief high-pass filtered (>3 kHz; HP) and broadband (0.5-20 kHz; BB) noises, with sound levels between 30 and 60 dB, A-weighted (dBA). To deny listeners any consistent azimuth-related head-shadow cues, stimuli were randomly interleaved. A plug immediately degraded azimuth performance, as evidenced by a sound level-dependent shift ("bias") of responses contralateral to the plug, and a level-dependent change in the slope of the stimulus-response relation ("gain"). Although the azimuth bias and gain were highly correlated, they could not be predicted from the plug's acoustic attenuation. Interestingly, listeners performed best for low-intensity stimuli at their normal-hearing side. These data demonstrate that listeners rely on monaural spectral cues for sound-source azimuth localization as soon as the binaural difference cues break down. Also the elevation response components were affected by the plug: elevation gain depended on both stimulus azimuth and on sound level and, as for azimuth, localization was best for low-intensity stimuli at the hearing side. Our results show that the neural computation of elevation incorporates a binaural weighting process that relies on the perceived, rather than the actual, sound-source azimuth. It is our conjecture that sound localization ensues from a weighting of all acoustic cues for both azimuth and elevation, in which the weights may be partially determined, and rapidly updated, by the reliability of the particular cue.