Threshold for a pulsed tone was measured as a function of its distance in frequency from the edge of a broad band of noise with very sharp skirts. Tone frequency was held constant at 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0, or 8.0 kHz while the position of the noise edge was varied about the frequency of the tone. The spectrum level of the noise was 40 dB. As expected, tone threshold decreased as the distance between the tone and the noise edge increased, and the rate of decrease was inversely related to tone frequency. The data were used in conjunction with a simple model of masking to derive an estimate of the shape of the auditory filter. A mathematical expression was found to describe the filter, and subsequently, this expression was used to predict the results reported by several other investigators.
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Roy D. Patterson (1974) studied this question.