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  • Title: Minimal upward spread of masking: correlations with speech and auditory brainstem response masked thresholds.
    Author: Klein AJ, Dubno JR.
    Journal: J Acoust Soc Am; 1993 Jun; 93(6):3422-30. PubMed ID: 8326068.
    Abstract:
    Much less than predicted upward spread of masking, termed undermasking, was previously noted in three elderly listeners, who are the focus of this report. Three aspects of undermasking were studied: Reliability, facilitation of speech recognition in noise, and correlation with physiological measurements. The masker was a 90-dB-SPL 1-kHz low-pass-filtered noise. Reliability of undermasking was assessed from serial measurements made over an approximately 2-year interval. Masked speech thresholds were measured with an adaptive procedure for two types of stimuli: spondaic words and the California Consonant Test. Subjects with undermasking had substantially lower masked speech thresholds than either audiometrically matched elderly subjects or young, normal-hearing subjects. It appears that undermasking is a stable characteristic that provides the listener with exceptionally good communication abilities in noise. Finally, a strong positive correlation was observed between the masked auditory brainstem response (wave V) threshold and the masked behavioral threshold, suggesting that the mechanism producing undermasking is in the auditory periphery.
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