Results from both dual tasks support the hypothesis that NR reduces listening effort and frees up cognitive resources for other tasks. Future hearing aid research should incorporate objective measurements of cognitive benefits.

A set of experiments was conducted to examine the loudness of sounds with temporally asymmetric amplitude envelopes. Envelopes were generated with fast-attack/slow-decay characteristics to produce F-S (or "fast-slow") stimuli, while temporally reversed versions of these same envelopes produced corresponding S-F ("slow-fast") stimuli. For sinusoidal (330-6000 Hz) and broadband noise carriers, S-F stimuli were louder than F-S stimuli of equal energy. The magnitude of this effect was sensitive to stimulus order, with the largest differences between F-S and S-F loudness occurring after exposure to a preceding F-S stimulus. These results are not compatible with automatic gain control, power-spectrum models of loudness, or predictions obtained using the auditory image model [Patterson et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 98, 1890-1894 (1995)]. Rather, they are comparable to phenomena of perceptual constancy, and may be related to the parsing of auditory input into direct and reverberant sound.

The dynamics of sound localization were studied using a free-field direct localization task (pointing to sound sources) and an observer-weighting analysis that assessed the relative influence of each click in a click-train stimulus. In agreement with previous studies of the precedence effect and binaural adaptation, weighting functions showed increased influence of the onset click when the interclick interval (ICI) was short (<5 ms). For longer ICIs, all clicks in a train contributed roughly the same amount to listeners' localization responses. Finally, when a short gap was introduced in the middle of a train, the influence of the click immediately following the gap increased, in agreement with the "restarting" results obtained by Hafter and Buell [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 88, 806-812 (1990)].

The effect of frequency uncertainty on the detection of tonal signals in noise was studied using a modified probe-signal method. Widths of the listening bands used during detection were measured directly, allowing for an analysis that separates the effects of having to monitor multiple independent bands from those due to limited frequency resolution. Uncertainty was varied by beginning each trial with a cue consisting of one, two, or four randomly chosen, simultaneously presented tones. An expected signal, whose frequency matched one of the components in a cue, was presented on a majority of trials. However, on remaining trials, the signal was a probe, which meant that its frequency differed from one of the components in the cue by a constant ratio. Performance as measured in percent correct declined for probes at increasingly distant ratios from the expected values. The results were converted to dB using individual psychometric functions for expected signals and listening bands were fitted using the rounded exponential filter of Patterson et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 72, 1788-1803 (1982)]. The obtained bandwidths are comparable to those reported using notched-noise maskers, but there is a small but consistent increase in bandwidth with increased numbers of components in the cues. The primary results is that the effects due to uncertainty are well described by a 1-of-M orthogonal band model, which takes into consideration limitations of the detector, including the widths of the listening bands.

Sensitivity to interaural delays in high-frequency waveforms was examined using amplitude-modulated signals. Carrier frequencies ranged from 2 to 6 kHz, and modulation was varied from 50 to 550 Hz. The signals’ components were not harmonically related. Findings include: (a) As carriers exceed 3 kHz, a broad region appears (from 150 to 350 Hz of modulation) over which there is little change in sensitivity to interaural time differences in the modulation envelope. (b) Signals with interaurally-discrepant carriers are more difficult to lateralize, but for carriers at and above 4 kHz, a region of constant performance can also be found as the interaural frequency difference is increased from zero. (c) Variations in modulation depth are useful in approximating the sideband attenuation that may occur as wideband signals are filtered by the auditory system. Such a technique allows an assessment of the importance of critical bands in these phenomena.

Previous experiments using trains of high-frequency filtered clicks have shown that for lateralization based on interaural difference of time or level, there is a decline in the usefulness of interaural information after the signal's onset when the clicks are presented at a high rate. This process has been referred to as "binaural adaptation." Of interest here are the conditions that produce a recovery from adaptation and allow for a resampling of the interaural information. A train of clicks with short interclick intervals is used to produce adaptation. Then, during its course, a treatment such as the insertion of a temporal gap or the addition of another "triggering" sound is tested for its ability to restart the binaural process. All of the brief triggers tested are shown to be capable of promoting recovery from adaptation. This suggests that, while the binaural system deals with the demands of high-frequency stimulation with rapid adaptation, it quickly cancels the adaptation in response to stimulus change.

Listeners were asked to detect interaural differences of time in trains of 4000-Hz clicks as the interclick interval (ICI) was varied from 10 to 1 ms and the number of clicks in a train (n) was varied from 1 to 32. Plots of log interaural threshold versus log n produce straight lines whose absolute slopes decrease toward 0.0 with decreasing ICI. These results are shown to fit a saturation model which argues that as the click rate increases, the evoked neural activity moves from a response that is tonic toward one which is more phasic. The need to postulate neural compression is based in part on the fact that the three most commonly cited models of the limitations imposed by high frequency--reduction in the depth of modulations due to narrow-band filtering within the auditory system, neural refractoriness, and nonindependence of successive samples of internal noise--do not predict a change in slope with rate.

Perceptual grouping of the frequency components from a source into a single auditory object is needed when localizing a complex sound in an environment where other sounds are also present. Two acoustic regularities that might allow for such grouping are a harmonic relation among the components and a commonality of their spatial positions. The utility of these cues was examined in a forced choice psychophysical task by measuring sensitivity to interaural differences of time (IDT) for low-frequency stimuli presented via earphones. In the first experiment, stimuli were composed of either one, two, or three frequencies. A signal detection analysis used to predict the effects of combining information across frequencies found summation to be optimal, regardless of the harmonicity of the complex. A second experiment presented two-frequency complexes in which one tone, the target, contained the IDT to be detected while the other, the distractor, was constant across all three intervals of the forced choice. For inharmonic complexes, performance for the target-distractor combinations was equivalent to that found for targets presented alone, suggesting segregation of the targets and distractors into separate auditory objects. However, for harmonic target-distractor combinations, performance was diminished. A signal detection analysis of these data supports the idea that for purposes of lateralization, the interaural information in the targets and distractors was combined into a variance-weighted value, even though it meant a lowering of performance. Thus it seems that for the grouping of complex acoustic stimuli in space, harmonic structure is more important than commonality of spatial position.