Abstract

Recent findings suggest that listeners primarily rely on envelope-modulation cues rather than energy cues in an increment detection task, where one of the two sounds contains a brief increment in intensity in a longer duration tone. The relative contributions of energy and envelope-modulation cues in increment detection were evaluated in six normal-hearing young adults. The detection thresholds for a 20 ms increment added in the middle of a 420 ms pedestal of either 500 or 4000 Hz were obtained as a function of pedestal level. On-frequency or off-frequency maskers were either 30- or 150-Hz wide random-phase Gaussian noise (RPN) or low-noise noise (LNN), centered either at 500 or 4000 Hz. The envelope fluctuation in LNN is minimal compared to that in RPN. The detection thresholds were greater in RPN than LNN in on-frequency, but not in off-frequency masking conditions. The detection thresholds increased at the wider masker bandwidth. Results suggest that listeners may rely on a decision process that is based on within-channel energy and envelope-modulation cues, where the within-channel envelope-modulation cues predominate. The relative weighting of these cues are pedestal and masker dependent. [Work supported by R01 DC006648 and T32 DC000013.]

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