Uncertainty about amplitude eliminates negative masking in a pure-tone amplitude discrimination experiment

Abstract

The role of uncertainty and its reduction in producing the “negative masking” of amplitude increments that is often observed in pure-tone amplitude discrimination experiments using circathreshold pedestals was investigated. It was found that negative masking is eliminated by uncertainty induced by roving the pedestal level across trials. On the basis of this finding, as well as those from a previous study, it is argued that, consistent with a longstanding theory of negative masking based on the notion of “intrinsic uncertainty,” negative masking requires near-optimal stimulus conditions, under which uncertainty about increment parameters is more or less absent.

Temporal integration for amplitude modulation in childhood: Interaction between internal noise and memory

“…Finally, our model did not take attentional effects into consideration. Wright and Dai (1998) showed that expectations influence AM detection performance (see also (Conroy and Kidd, 2021). To the best of our knowledge, there is no model of auditory modulation processing able to reproduce such uncertainty effects.…”