Characterising auditory filter nonlinearity

An important aspect of auditory nonlinearity is that psychoacoustically measured auditory filters broaden as the level at which they are measured increases. However, it is not yet clear whether the change in filter shape is controlled primarily by the level of the probe or that of the masker. We have therefore developed a new method for fitting filter shapes to notched-noise data in which filter parameters depend explicitly on signal level (either probe or masker). By applying this technique to a set of notched-noise data in which both fixed-probe and fixed-masker paradigms have been used at a range of levels, we have been able to show that models in which filter parameters depend on probe level are considerably more successful than models in which filter parameters depend upon masker level. The results from this new procedure have enabled us to describe the nonlinear changes in auditory filter shape at 2 kHz with only five parameters. Also discussed are the implications of these findings for the generation of excitation patterns and for the computational implementation of simple, yet reasonably realistic nonlinear auditory filters whose shape depends on their output.