Abstract
Psychophysical research suggests that active cochlear processing may partially explain temporal effects observed in certain auditory masking tasks [Strickland (2001), (2004)]. To investigate this possibility, this study examined the relationship between subjects’ psychophysical performance and the responses of their cochleas to the same stimulus waveforms. Stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emissions (SFOAEs) were recorded in the ear canal using a nonlinear procedure. The results showed that the nonlinear SFOAE to a brief tonal signal (4 kHz, 10 ms, 60 dB SPL) in a background noise (100–6000 Hz, 400 ms, 25 dB/Hz) increased in magnitude (with signal delay) over a similar time course to subjects’ improvement psychophysically in detecting the same signal. Manipulation of the noise bandwidth revealed that the increases in SFOAE magnitude and the improvement in psychophysical detection both were caused primarily by off-frequency components of the noise: lowpass components for SFOAEs, and lowpass or highpass components for psychophysics. These findings are consistent with a change in the slope of the cochlear input-output function from highly compressive to less compressive over the duration of the background noise, a change that might be attributable to negative feedback from the efferent system. [Work supported by NIDCD.]
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