The phase angle of addition in temporal masking for diotic and dichotic listening conditions

The phase angle, α, between a tonal signal and a tonal masker was varied from 0° to 135° in simultaneous masking, forward masking, and pulsation-threshold paradigms. In all conditions the frequency of the signal and masker was 500 Hz. For forward masking both diotic (MOSO) and dichotic (MOSπ) listening conditions were investigated. Only the dichotic case was studied using the pulsation threshold method. In simultaneous masking, thresholds varied as a function of a in both diotic and dichotic conditions. Thresholds in the diotic conditions were consistently different from those in the dichotic conditions - i.e., there were masking-level differences (MLDs) at most values of α tested. In forward masking and pulsation-threshold, however, thresholds were independent of α in the dichotic conditions; and thresholds were independent of α in the diotic, forward masking conditions. Nevertheless, for forward masking the dichotic thresholds remained below the diotic thresholds, yielding MLDs of 3-6 dB. Thus, in nonsimultaneous masking, there is a clear effect of the interaural signal phase, but not of the masker-signal phase relationship, on signal detectability. These results imply that masker-signal phase information is either not preserved or not used by subjects in nonsimultaneous tone-on-tone masking experiments.