Monaural and binaural masking release with speech-like stimuli

Abstract

The relevance of masking release by comodulation and interaural phase difference (IPD) for speech perception is still unclear. We used speech-like stimuli to link spectro-temporal properties of formants with masking release. The stimuli comprised a tone and three masker bands centered at formant frequencies F1, F2, and F3 derived from a consonant-vowel (/gu/, /fu/, and /pu/). The target was a diotic or dichotic frequency-modulated tone following F2 trajectories. Results showed no statistically significant comodulation masking release (CMR), while the binaural masking level difference (BMLD) was comparable to previous findings. The data suggest that factors other than comodulation may play a dominant role in grouping frequency components in speech.