Effects of Masker Envelope Fluctuations on the Temporal Effect

This study tests the hypothesis that small or absent temporal effects for narrowband maskers are due to the inherent temporal envelope fluctuations of Gaussian noise. Temporal effects were measured for narrowband noise maskers with fluctuating ( “fluctuating maskers”) and flattened (“flattened maskers”) temporal envelopes as a function of masker level (Exp. I) and in the presence of fluctuating and flattened precursors (Exp. II). The temporal effect was absent for fluctuating narrowband maskers and as large as ~ 7 dB for flattene d narrowband maskers. The AC-coupled power of the temporal envelopes of precursors and maskers accounted for 94 % of the variance in probe detection thresholds measured with fluctuating and flattened precursors and maskers. These results suggest that masker temporal envelope fluctuations contribute to the temporal effect and should be considered in future modeling efforts.

Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - August 20, 2018 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research