Interaural Intensity Discrimination: Insensitivity at 1000 Hz

Recent data from three laboratories have replicated Mills' [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 32, 132-134 (1960)] finding that interaural intensity discrimination is relatively poorer for tones of 1000 Hz than for tones of either higher or lower frequencies. To get a finer look at this frequency effect, interaural intensity difference thresholds were obtained from four subjects for tones of several frequencies around 1000 Hz. An adaptive two-interval forced-choice procedure was employed, in which the overall intensity of the signals was varied randomly in order to prevent subjects from listening to monaural loudness changes. Despite large intersubject differences in overall sensitivity to interaural intensity differences, all four subjects showed a local peak in their threshold functions at or near 1000 Hz. This curious "1000-Hz effect" might be explained by imagining that an interaural intensity comparator operates more efficiently as frequency increases, but that a peripheral interaural intensity difference to interaural-time difference conversion contributes to laterality judgments for low-frequency tones, thus acting to lower thresholds again for frequencies below 1000 Hz.