R. H. Gilkey
Dept. of Psychol., Wright State Univ., Dayton, OH 45435
Armstrong Lab., AL/CFBA, Wright--Patterson AFB, Dayton, OH 45433-6573
Gilkey et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 78, 1207--1219 (1985)] compared ``monaural'' (NoSo) and ``binaural'' (NoS(pi)) performance in a reproducible noise masking task. Despite a large masking level difference, the responses to individual noise samples under the NoSo and NoS(pi) conditions were highly correlated (p<<0.001). Isabelle and Colburn [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 352--359 (1991)], on the other hand, found correlations that were weak, and sometimes negative. Gilkey et al. used wideband masking noise, whereas Isabelle and Colburn used narrow-band maskers. On that basis, Isabelle and Colburn argued that the correlation observed by Gilkey et al. might be more appropriately attributed to similarities in across-critical-band processing, rather than to similarities in within-critical-band processing. The present study examined both wideband and narrow-band maskers and found highly significant correlations between monaural and binaural performance for both maskers (p<<0.005). [Work supported by NIH-DC-000786 and AFOSR-91-0289.]