Lateralization of tonal stimuli by the cat

Abstract

The ability of the cat to “lateralize” tonal signals having interaural intensive or interaural temporal disparities was measured. Interaural intensive differences were studied at 0.5, 1.0, and 3.0 kHz. Interaural temporal differences were studied at 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 kHz. Miniature audio transducers were employed to present the stimuli to the animals. The transducers were held in a fixed spatial relation to the auditory canal by means of “pinna inserts” and leather helmets. An avoidance response in a shuttle box was used as the dependent variable. The animals' task involved the detection of a right-left reversal in a gated sequence of tone bursts. The cat appears to be about as sensitive as the human to both interaural intensive and temporal disparities at each of the frequencies studied.