Abstract
A stimulus condition in which the signal presentation partially overlaps the end of the masker presentation is intermediate between a simultaneous masking condition (complete overlap) and a forward masking condition (no overlap). The question is, “What process underlies signal detection in this condition?” To answer this question, this experiment examines the masked threshold for a 20‐ms, 1‐kHz sinusoidal signal (20‐ms cosine‐squared ramps with no steady state) as a function of the temporal position of the signal with respect to a 400‐ms, 1‐kHz, 70‐dB SPL sinusoidal masker (quadrature phase, 0‐ms ramps). These thresholds are compared to those obtained for the portion of each signal which occurred after the masker; these “partial” signals had 1‐ms onset ramps which rose during the final 1 ms of the masker; the beginning portion of the 20‐ms signal (the portion which overlapped the masker) was eliminated. When the threshold for the whole signal equals the threshold for the partial signal (which necessarily is determined by the process of forward masking), one may easily argue that the “simultaneous” portion of the signal did not measurably influence signal detection. The data show that signal thresholds in transition conditions are determined by forward masking for stimulus overlaps as great as 90%. [Research supported by NSF and NIH.]
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