Reducing backward masking through temporal contralateral cueing

Abstract

Our previous experiments showed that the contralateral cueing improved the detectability of a signal during monotic backward masking in the presence of a second, continuous masking noise [J.S. Puleo and R.E. Pastore, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 60, S49(A) (1976)]. In the present experiment, we investigated whether any improvements in detectability during backward masking would be differentially affected by varying the amount of temporal (onset and offset) cueing information regarding the signal's occurrence. Temporal cueing information was provided independent of any correlation between other cue and signal parameters by introducing a gap in an otherwise continuous (Nμ) broadband masking noise in the ear contralateral to that performing the detection task. The data showed that while detectability during simultaneous masking was not significantly improved by any of the cues, there were significant improvements in detectability during backward masking—but only when the cue was simultaneous with and extended in time 1 msec before the observation interval. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical importance regarding the nature of backward masking. [Research supported by a grant from NINCDS.]