Abstract
Previous work has demonstrated that infants’ thresholds for a pure tone are elevated by a masker more than would be predicted from their critical bandwidths. The present studies explored the nature of this additional masking. In Experiment 1, detection thresholds of 6-month-old infants and of adults for a 1-kHz tone were estimated under three conditions: in quiet, in the presence of a 4- to 10-kHz bandpa] noise at 40 dB SPL, and in the presence of the same noise at 50 dB SPL. The noise was gated on at the beginning of each trial. Adult thresholds were the same in all three conditions, indicating that little or no sensory masking took place in the presence of the noise. Infant thresholds were about 10 dB higher in the presence of the noise. We term this effectdistraction masking. In Experiment 2, the effect of gating the noise on at trial onset was examined. Thresholds for the same tone were estimated in quiet and in the presence of the bandpass noise at 40 dB SPL, but the noise was presented continuously during the session. Under these conditions, distraction masking was still observed for infants. These findings suggest that a masker can have nonsensory effects on infants’ performance in a psychoacoustic task.
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This research was supported by NIH Grant DC00396 to L. A. Werner (formerly L.W. Olsho). Preliminary results of the studies were reported at the Midwinter Research Meetings of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology in 1989 and 1990.
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Werner, L.A., Bargones, J.Y. Sources of auditory masking in infants: Distraction effects. Perception & Psychophysics 50, 405–412 (1991). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205057
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205057