Psychophysical tuning curves measure frequency selectivity via tone-on-tone masking.

Evidence

A different type of masking experiment called the psychophysical tuning curve (PTC), a measurement of frequency selectivity similar in concept to the physiological tuning curve, has been used to illustrate additional nonlinear effects of auditory processing. Measuring the PTC uses tone-on-tone masking, in which the signal and the masker are both tones. In a typical PTC measurement task, the tone to be detected is fixed in frequency and in intensity, usually around 10 dB above threshold. Then, for various masker frequencies, the experimenter measures the masker level that just masks the tone. When masking is measured in this way, low masker levels are associated with maskers that produce a lot of masking; they are very effective. We generate a PTC by plotting the masker level needed to just mask the tone versus the frequency of the masker. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 528

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the psychophysical tuning curve technique and how it builds a tuning curve from masker-level data.