Investigations into the build-up and breakdown of the precedence effect

The build-up and breakdown phases of the precedence effect were investigated with speech and continuous broadband-noise and in virtual environments with multiple reflections. It was confirmed that a build-up phase is indeed observable under these conditions. During this study some observations were made which were interpreted as evidence against the existence of a "breakdown" as commonly assumed, e.g., when interpreting the so-called Clifton effect. This evidence was then confirmed by the results of an additional experiment. Consequently, a working hypothesis has been set up as to which the precedence effect builds up in a direction-specific or even scenario-specific way.