Backward masking of monaural signals by changes in interaural noise correlation

Abstract

Research from our laboratory has shown that instability or changes in masking noise which are temporally contiguous with the potential signal will result in nonsimultaneous masking effects. The present experiment involves a monaural signal (1000 Hz) embedded in a broadband noise. Noise in the other earphone either was continuous, with an interaural correlation of +1 or −1 (+1 and −1 control conditions), or shifted from one correlation to the other T-ms following signal offset (T = 2, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160 ms). Relative to both control conditions, both postsignal correlation-shift conditions produced greater masking, with the amount of masking decreasing as a function of increasing values of T. The results are discussed in terms of the role of noise parameter stability in masking paradigms. [Research supported by grant NS 10995 from NINCDS.]