Figure 1.

Schematic representation of the stimuli used in experiment 1. Five narrow-band noises were presented at octave frequencies between 0.25 and 4 kHz. Each noise burst repeated five times. During the final noise burst a target signal (1-kHz pure tone) was embedded in the central noise band. The final noise bursts were always presented synchronously, but the temporal relationship between the central masking noise-band (MN) and the flanking noise-band (FN) precursors (highlighted in light gray) could be varied. The NOI_M and NOI_F represent the onset-to-onset time between successive MN and FN bursts, respectively. The value of ΔT represents the constant onset asynchrony between the MN and FN precursors in conditions where the NOI_M and NOI_F were equal. In the sketched example NOI_M = NOI_F and ΔT ≠ 0 ms.