Masking of Pulsed Tones by Bands of Noise

If, for instance, a 2200-cps tone is pulsed 150 times/sec, a low pitch (periodicity pitch) will be heard corresponding to that of a 150-cps pure tone. This experiment investigates the effectiveness of different bands of filtered noise in the masking of such pulses and in the masking of two pure-tone stimuli, 150 and 2200 cps. Although the pulses and 2200-cps pure tone yield quite different pitches, the present results indicate that the masking of each requires nearly identical frequency components and sound levels of noise. The 150-cps tone, although yielding a pitch approximating that of the pulses, requires greatly different characteristics of noise to mask. Considering differences in apparatus and technique, reasonable agreement with other studies of pure tone masking by bands of noise is found. If masking is viewed as a neural phenomenon, these data provide additional evidence of the neural nature of periodicity pitch.