Description:
<jats:p>Masked thresholds of a 500-Hz sinusoid were measured in an NρSπ condition for both running and frozen-noise maskers using a 3IFC procedure. The nominal masker correlation varied between 0.64 and 1, and the bandwidth of the masker was either 10, 100, or 1000 Hz. The running-noise thresholds were expected to be higher than the frozen-noise thresholds because of interaural correlation uncertainty of the masker intervals for running-noise conditions. Since this correlation uncertainty decreases with increasing masker bandwidth, differences between running- and frozen-noise conditions should decrease with increasing bandwidth for interaural correlations smaller than +1. For an interaural correlation close to +1, no difference between frozen-noise and running-noise thresholds is expected for all values of the masker bandwidth. These expectations are supported by the experimental data. For the 10-Hz running-noise condition, the thresholds can be accounted for in terms of interaural correlation uncertainty. For the frozen-noise conditions and both the 100- and 1000-Hz running-noise conditions, it is likely that the limits of accuracy of the internal representation determine the detection thresholds. [Work supported by the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).]</jats:p>