Peripheral auditory processing and investigations of the "precedence effect" which utilize successive transient stimuli.

This article addresses how a consideration of peripheral auditory processing can help to understand experiments concerning binaural precedence that employ successive binaural transients. It appears that much of the patterning of the behavioral data is amenable to an explanation based on peripheral interactions that result from auditory filtering and the functioning of auditory hair cells in combination with a binaural model based on cross correlation. A noteworthy aspect of this approach is that it does not include inhibitory mechanisms like those commonly invoked to explain binaural precedence.