Effects of Age on Sensitivity to Interaural Time Differences in Envelope and Fine Structure, Individually and in Combination

Sensitivity to interaural time differences (ITDs) in envelope and temporal fine structure (TFS) of amplitude-modulated (AM) tones was assessed for young and older subjects, all with clinically normal hearing at the carrier frequencies of 250 and 500 Hz. Some subjects had hearing loss at higher frequencies. In experiment 1, thresholds for detecting changes in ITD were measured when the ITD was present in the TFS alone (ITD), the envelope alone (ITD), or both (ITD). Thresholds tended to be higher for the older than for the young subjects. ITD thresholds were much higher than ITD thresholds, while ITD thresholds were similar to ITD thresholds. ITD thresholds were lower than ITD thresholds obtained with an unmodulated pure tone, indicating that uninformative AM can improve ITD discrimination. In experiment 2, equally detectable values of ITD and ITD were combined so as to give consistent or inconsistent lateralization. There were large individual differences, but several subjects gave scores that were much higher than would be expected from the optimal combination of independent sources of information, even for the inconsistent condition. It is suggested that ITD and ITD cues are processed partly independently, but that both cues influence lateralization judgments, even when one cue is uninformative.