Temporal window shape as a function of frequency and level

In an earlier article Moore et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, 1102-1116 (1988), preliminary work on the temporal-window model of temporal resolution in the auditory system was described. The temporal window is conceived of as a temporal integrator that slides in time and that is implemented as an intensity-weighting function. The shape of the temporal window was estimated by measuring the threshold for a brief sinusoidal signal presented in a temporal gap between two bursts of noise as a function of the duration of the gap and the position of the signal within the gap. In this paper, a much more thorough examination of the effects of level and frequency on the shape of the window is presented, using the same basic technique. Temporal window shapes were measured at four different frequencies (300, 900, 2700, and 8100 Hz) and at three different masker levels covering a 20-dB range at each frequency. The shape of the temporal window was well described by modeling each side as the sum of two rounded-exponential (roex) functions. The equivalent rectangular duration (ERD) of the window decreased from about 13 to 9 ms as the center frequency increased from 300 to 900 Hz, but decreased only slightly, to 7 ms, as the center frequency increased to 8100. The greater ERD at 300 Hz does not seem to be explicable in terms of "ringing" in the auditory filter. The ERD decreased somewhat with increasing level, for example, having a value of about 10 ms at 2700 Hz with a 20-dB masker spectrum level and about 7 ms with a 40-dB masker spectrum level.