Measures of auditory frequency selectivity using forward masking: Effects of masker-probe time delay and masker duration

Abstract

Psychophysical tuning curves and masking patterns have been obtained under a variety of conditions using a forward masking paradigm. In one experiment 300-ms tonal maskers preceded 20-ms tonal probes by time intervals from 5 to 40 ms. In a second experiment musket-probe time delay was held constant at 5 ms while masker duration was varied from 500 to 35 ms. It was found that increasing masker-prob time delay or decreasing masker duration reduced the “residual masking” effect and resulted in concommitant changes in the observed frequency selectivity. [Work supported by a David Ross Fellowship from Purdue University and grants from N.I.H.]