Simultaneous and temporal masking are two frequently used techniques in psychology and vision science. Although there are many studies and theories related to each masking technique, there are no systematic investigations of their mutual relationship, even though both techniques are often applied together. Here, the authors show that temporal masking can both undo and enhance the deteriorating ...

This is the first in a series of two papers on masking. The objective of these papers is to develop a masking protocol that provides valid measures of threshold and is, in general, faster than the plateau method. In this paper, a masking method is developed that can replace the traditional plateau method in most masking situations. This new method is optimized to require fewer masking levels th...

The purpose of this study is to clarify the role of suppression in the growth of masking when a signal is well above the masker in frequency (upward spread of masking). Classical psychophysical models assume that masking is primarily due to the spread of masker excitation, and that the nonlinear upward spread of masking reflects a differential growth in excitation between the masker and the sig...

Taste-masking technologies are important for obtaining high-patient compliance and drug therapy efficiency, since many oral-delivery drugs have unpleasant qualities such as bitterness, sourness or saltiness. Taste-masking technology includes two aspects: selection of appropriate tastemasking substances (polymers, flavourings, sweeteners, amino acids, etc.) and selection of appropriate taste-mas...

There are many classes of masking, but two major classes are easily defined: neural masking and dynamic masking. Neural masking characterizes the internal noise associated with the neural representation of the auditory signal, a form of loudness noise. Dynamic masking is strictly cochlear, and is associated with cochlear outerhair-cell processing. This form is responsible for dynamic nonlinear ...

Visual overlay masking is typically studied with a mask and target located at the same depth plane. Masking is reduced when binocular disparity separates the target from the mask (G. Moraglia & B. Schneider, 1990). We replicate this finding for a broadband target masked by natural images and find the greatest masking (threshold elevation) when target and mask occupy the same depth plane. Maskin...

The effects of combining two equally effective maskers were studied in normally hearing and elderly hearing-impaired subjects. The additivity of nonsimultaneous masking was investigated by measuring thresholds for a brief 4-kHz signal in the presence of a broadband-noise forward masker, a backward masker, and a combination of both. For the normally hearing subjects, combining two equally effect...