ABSTRACT
The precedence effect makes its appearance in several guises: as a localization phenomenon, as the Haas effect, and as dereverberation and decoloration. To understand the diverse psychophysical and physiological experiments that have been done on this multifaceted effect requires a central model of considerable flexibility. The precedence effect and variations on the prece dence effect, the Franssen illusion, the Clifton effect, and the case of overlapping tones, represent competitions between successive stimulus sounds and among their localization cues. Experiments with steady-state and transient signals suggest that the cues are weighted by a plausibility evalu ation prior to a localization calculation. More generally, the concept of localization strengths as weighting factors in an optimum processor model of localization offers promise for a comprehensive theory of the precedence effect.
