Effect of psychophysical backward masking on human brain-stem responses (ABR)

A backward-masking (BWM) paradigm was used to obtain measurements on 4 normal young adults of psychophysical BWM and of the analogous electrophysiological masking from human auditory brain-stem responses. The same stimuli and Ss were used in both experiments. Psychophysical BWM was determined to a 100-musec click masked by a 100-msec white noise after time delays of 1, 5, 10, 25, and 100 msec and at noise masker levels of 50, 65, and 80 db SPL. As previously demonstrated, more psychophysical BWM occurs at short delta ts (1 to 10 msec) than at longer delays and masked thresholds are greater as masker level increases. In the electrophysiological experiment, using delta ts = 1, 5, and 10 msec, the extent to which wave V latency was affected by the following masker was determined for various experimental conditions. Wave V latency increased with a decrease in delta t, for maskers above probe level, except that latency was not significantly affected by any masker level at delta t = 10 msec.