ABSTRACT
Earphones are often employed to study the cues used by subjects to localize sources. Earphones generally produce an auditory image that people describe as within or near the head. This exact locus of the image depends on the stimulus conditions. People call this a lateralized image, rather than a localized one. Studies of lateralization have contributed important information about binaural processing. One can actually measure the amount of selectivity in terms of the amount of binaural masking in decibels. The problem of auditory localization is the understanding of cues used to localize a sound source in space. Most presentations of this topic first discuss sinusoidal source and how two obvious cues, namely, interaural intensity and interaural time, influence judgments of localization. Headphones can be used in discrimination experiments without making any assumptions about the basis of the discrimination. Echoes are usually heard only at much, much longer durations—500 to 1,000 msec.
