Stimulus variability and auditory filter shape

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Abstract
The way in which stimulus variability affects the attenuation characteristic or auditory filter shape inferred from masking experiments was investigated in humans. Stimulus variability had a pronounced effect on filter shapes derived from bandlimiting experiments in which the signal is a tone, the masker is a band of noise centered on the tone and the independent variable is the width of the noise band; no effect was observed on filters obtained from notched-noise masking experiments. To extent the utility of the filter-shape concept, an experiment in which the masker is 2 tones rather than noise was replicated. The tones, each 57 dB SPL [sound pressure level], were used to mask a narrow band of noise centered midway between them; threshold for the noise signal was measured as a function of the frequency separation of the tonal maskers. The data is in good agreement with the auditory filter shape derived using a notched-noise masker and a tonal signal. To predict the absolute levels obtained in the noise-masking experiments, it was assumed that internal noise adds to the variability of the stimuli. The resulting model, which incorporates the filter shape from the notched-noise experiment and the energy detection model, predicts not only the form but also the absolute levels obtained in the bandlimiting and notched-noise experiments. It also predicts the shape of the data from the two-tone masking experiment but it does not predict the overall level.

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