ABSTRACT
The results of several experiments on auditory recognition masking are discussed in terms of their implications for a general theory of auditory masking. The task entails the presentation of two brief pure tones in rapid succession. The subject is instructed to categorize the first of these with respect to pitch and to disregard the second. The basic finding is that categorization performance is poor, approaching chance, at short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA), but systematically increases as SOA is incremented. Manipulations of the laterality relationship between the tones, and other considerations, specifically reveal (1) that distinctly different and identifiable forms of masking occur at the peripheral and the central levels of the auditory information-processing sequence; and (2) that a clearly delineated process of selective attention operates prior to the point of contact between input and categorization processes in memory.
