MANIPULATIONS OF THE DURATION AND RELATIVE ONSETS OF 2-TONE FORWARD MASKERS - COMMENT

Champlin and Wright {''Manipulations of the duration and relative onse ts of two-tone forward maskers'' [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 93, 1269-1274 (1 993)]} examined the effects of masker duration in forward masking with one- and two-tone maskers. They found, among other things, that the a mount of psychophysical suppression increases as the temporal overlap between the two masker components increases. They proposed a two-stage neural model to account for this finding. The purpose of this Letter is to show, experimentally, that their results are consistent with an explanation based on mechanical suppression. (C) 1996 Acoustical Socie ty of America.