A psychophysical evaluation of a model for suppression and excitation in remote masking

In the classical literature both the masking and the suppression of one tone by a second tone of lower frequency have been shown to be nonlinear functions of overall level. Here, the relation between these two tasks is further constrained by measuring both remote masking and suppression with the same subjects. The remote masking experiment measures the effect of a 602-Hz sinusoidal masker on the detectability of a simultaneous 1500-Hz sinusoidal signal, while the suppression experiment measures the effect of a 602-Hz sinusoidal suppressor on the forward masking produced by a 1500-Hz sinusoid. The data agree with earlier studies and are interpreted in the context of the multiple band pass nonlinearity model [J. L. Goldstein, “Updating cochlear driven models of auditory perception: A model for nonlinear auditory frequency analyzing filters,” in Working Models of Human Perception, edited by B. Elsendoorn and H. Bouma (Academic, New York, 1989), pp. 19–57], which suggests that both excitatory and suppressive mechanisms influence remote masking. [Work supported by NSF and AFOSR.]