The contribution of envelope and carrier to cues for tone-in-noise detection in narrow-band reproducible noises

Abstract

To elucidate the roles of envelope and carrier cues in detection of a 500-Hz tone in 50-Hz bandwidth noise under N0Sπ conditions, hit- and false-alarm rates were collected for 4 sets of reproducible stimuli. The envelopes and carriers from two sets of stimuli (each with 25 signal-plus-noise and 25 noise-alone waveforms) were extracted and recombined to form 2 new sets (each having the carriers from one of the original sets and the envelopes from the other). Noises were preselected to produce minimal spectral splatter in the recombination processes. Preliminary results for signal-plus-noise trials suggest that carrier cues (e.g., temporal fine structure) are dominant over envelope cues (i.e., response patterns were more similar between sets with the same carriers but different envelopes, than between sets with the same envelopes but different carriers); however, carrier cues cannot completely explain the data. Results for noise-alone trials suggest that both envelope cues and carrier cues contribute to listener responses. Further analyses will explore potential interactions between monaural and binaural stimulus properties, as well as interactions between interaural envelope cues and carrier cues. [Supported by NIH DC007798(SAD), DC001641(LHC), and DC00100(HSC).]