title: Masker-first advantage for cues in informational masking.
abstract: The detectability of a pure-tone signal may be reduced by adding a small number of randomly drawn masker tones remote from the signal frequency, an effect attributed to informational masking. A pretrial cue consisting of either the upcoming signal or masker releases informational masking, but a pretrial cue of the signal-plus-masker stimulus does not. In these experiments the relative potency of pre- and posttrial cues in releasing informational masking was examined. In separate conditions the masker-alone and signal-plus-masker stimuli were cues. The results indicated a masker-first advantage, i.e., sensitivity was superior when a masker cue preceded a yes/no trial interval compared to (a) when a signal-plus-masker preceded the trial, and (b) when either cue type followed the yes/no trial interval. A masker-first advantage was also obtained when the results from a two-interval forced-choice same/different task were examined. In contrast, a masker-first advantage was not obtained when the frequency of the signal to be detected was random. For detection tasks using random multi-tone maskers there may be differences in processing efficiency depending on the order in which stimuli are presented. The "masker-first advantage" may depend, in part, on observers maintaining their attention at the signal frequency.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA. richards@cattell.psych.upenn.edu
authors.forename: Virginia M
authors.initials: VM
authors.lastname: Richards
authors.forename: Rong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Gerald
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kidd
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology*; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D003463:Cues; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors