Lateralization of signals without onsets

The importance of ongoing temporal information for the lateralization of low‐frequency tones was examined by presenting signals with no discernible onsets or offsets. Listeners heard continuous noise, either correlated or uncorrelated interaurally. During two intervals, the noise disappeared leaving a 500‐Hz tone. The interaural phase of the tone varied between intervals, and detection of the phase shift was measured using forced‐choice psychophysics. Since sound was always present, the effect of removing the noise can be thought of as primarily one of adding temporal organization to the 500‐Hz channels. With uncorrelated noise, performance was slightly worse than that found with tone bursts presented in the quiet, while with correlated noise there was virtually no effect of the missing onsets. There was an interaction with duration: Below 100 msec, detection with the correlated noise became suddenly worse, breaking away from lateralization in the quiet. With uncorrelated noise, this steep break occurred ...