[AUDITORY] Localizing smoke detectors - why is it so hard?

["Jennifer M. Groh" <jmgroh@xxxxxxxx>]

Dear List,

I am writing a book for a general audience on how the brain processes 
spatial information ("Making Space"). The chapter on hearing covers many 
topics in sound localization, but there is one that I'm currently still 
quite puzzled about: why it is so hard to localize a smoke detector when 
its battery starts to fail?  Here is what I have considered so far:

- To my ear, the chirp sounds high frequency enough that ILD cues should 
be reasonably large.

- At the same time, it seems to have a broad enough bandwidth, and in 
any case it has onset-and-offset cues, that ITD cues should be usable.

- A possibility is that the chirp is too brief, and that limits dynamic 
feedback, i.e. changes in ITD and ILD as the head turns during a sound. 
  However, in my laboratory we have obtained excellent sound 
localization performance in head-restrained monkeys and human subjects 
localizing sounds that are briefer than the reaction time to make an 
orienting movement.

- An additional possibility is that we have too little experience with 
such sounds to have assembled a mental template of the spectrum at the 
source, so that spectral cues are of less use than is normally the case.

I'm leaning towards a combination of the last two factors, which 
together would render the cone of confusion unresolved for these stimuli.

Thoughts?

Best wishes,

--Jennifer Groh

--
Jennifer M. Groh, Ph.D.

Professor
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Department of Neurobiology
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience


B203 LSRC, Box 90999
Durham, NC 27708

919-681-6536
www.duke.edu/~jmgroh