ATTENDING TO AUDITORY FILTERS THAT WERE NOT STIMULATED DIRECTLY

The effectiveness of two types of tonal cues for reducing frequency un certainty was studied in a tonal detection-in-noise task. Signals vari ed at random from trial to trial over the range 750-3000 Hz. The three conditions included: (1) maximum uncertainty in which there were no c ues; (2) minimal uncertainty in which ''iconic cues'' were identical t o the signal to be detected; and (3) partial uncertainty in which ''re lative cues'' were set to 2/3 of the signal frequency, i.e., at the mu sical 5th. Results show that relative cues and iconic cues were both e ffective in reducing uncertainty compared to the no-cue condition, but that performance with relative cues was poorer than with iconic cues by 1.4 dB. In addition, a modified probe-signal method was used to est imate the widths of the subjective listening bands. Application of a m odel of the auditory filter [R. Patterson and B. C. J. Moore, Frequenc y Selectivity in Hearing, edited by B. C. J. Moore (Academic, New York , 1986)] to these data showed that the subjective listening bands used with iconic cues were similar in width to typical measures of the cri tical band but that the bands used with relative cues were wider by a factor of roughly 1.6.