White noise masks the spectral artifacts a gap would otherwise introduce.
Evidence
As we observe in the top panels of Figure 5–4, when a gap is introduced into a white noise, spectral splatter is negligible, as white noise already has a wide frequency range. The two spectra contain the same frequency components. Although the two noise spectra are very slightly different from each other, using a random sample of white noise each time a stimulus is presented (with or without the gap) prevents the listener from using slight spectral differences to detect the presence of the gap. We can do this because every sample of white noise is different with unique amplitude fluctuations. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 956
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEFINE: Explains why white noise is the preferred stimulus for isolating true temporal processing — a methodological core concept.
Related
- White noise is not a valid stimulus to assess gap perception. (similarity 0.92)
- Gap added to a tone creates audible spectral splatter or side lobes. (similarity 0.87)
- Brief quiet gaps in sounds can introduce spectral cues that contaminate gap detection results (similarity 0.82)
- White noise shows frequency-flat long-term spectra but frequency-dependent short-term spectra (similarity 0.81)
- White noise has flat power across the 20 to 20,000 Hz hearing range (similarity 0.80)
- Narrowband noise’s natural waveform fluctuations mask the presence of inserted gaps (similarity 0.80)
- White noise has autocorrelation only at zero time shift. (similarity 0.79)
- Tones confound gap detection with spectral-change detection. (similarity 0.79)
- Inserting a temporal gap into a stimulus produces spectral splatter at the gap edges (similarity 0.78)