Effects of cueing in auditory temporal masking.

Area of Science:

• Auditory perception
• Psychoacoustics
• Speech and language development

Background:

• Previous research indicated a backward-masking deficit in language-impaired children.
• This interpretation influenced treatments for childhood language problems.
• The current study re-evaluated the temporal-masking paradigm.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate signal/masker uncertainty effects in adult listeners using a temporal-masking paradigm.
• To evaluate stimulus conditions with reduced signal/masker confusion.
• To re-examine the findings of Wright et al. (1997) in light of adult listener data.

Main Methods:

• Measured masked detection of 20-ms sinusoids at various temporal positions relative to a masker.
• Investigated listener uncertainty using contralateral auditory cues.
• Tested on-frequency and off-frequency signal conditions.

Main Results:

• Cueing the signal in the backward-masking condition eliminated the masking effect for on-frequency signals.
• No significant cueing effects were observed for other temporal positions or off-frequency signals.
• Adult listeners showed reduced masked-detection thresholds when the signal was cued.

Conclusions:

• On-frequency backward masking can be overcome by cueing the signal in normal adult listeners.
• The deficit observed in language-impaired children might be due to signal/masker confusion.
• Findings suggest a potential re-evaluation of temporal-processing deficit interpretations in childhood language disorders.