The effects of lateralized adaptors on lateral position judgements of tones within and across frequency channels

Two experiments examined the effect of highly lateralized adaptor tone pulses on the perceived intracranial location of subsequent test tones. In Experiment 1, adaptor tones of each of two frequencies, highly lateralized to opposite sides by a quarter-period interaural time difference (ITD), were found to shift the perceived intracranial location of test tones of each adaptor frequency away from the side of the adaptor. The shift in perceived location was seen for all test tone ITDs with the same sign as the adaptor tone, and sometimes extended to include test tones with small ITDs favoring the opposite ear. The generality of the effect across test tone ITDs of the same sign as the adaptor suggests that the human auditory lateralization system is built of two (left, right) hemifield-tuned azimuthal channels, and that perceived lateral location depends on the relative outputs of those two channels. In Experiment 2, the perceived location of test tones lateralized by ITD was studied in the same listeners at each of the same two frequencies, but after selective adaptation with tone pulses of only one frequency and laterality. The perceived lateral position of test tones with the same frequency as that of the adaptor underwent the same changes as seen in Experiment 1. The perceived lateral position of test tones of the nonadapted frequency usually shifted weakly in the opposite direction, i.e., in the direction expected if the second adaptor from Experiment 1 had actually been present. These data have implications both for the processes mediating selective adaptation using contingent stimuli, and for the azimuthal tuning of auditory spatial channels in man.