Modulation interference in detection and discrimination of amplitude modulation

Two experiments were conducted to assess the effect of the rate of sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM) of a masker tone on detection of SAM of a probe tone (experiment 1) or on SAM-rate discrimination for the probe tone (experiment 2). When modulated at the same rate as the probe, the masker interfered with both the detection of probe modulation and the discrimination of the rate of probe modulation. The interference was obtained when the masker was either higher or lower in frequency than the probe (the probe and masker were separated by 2 oct). The amount of interference in detecting probe modulation (experiment 1) decreased as the common base rate of modulation was increased from 5 to 200 Hz. For rate discrimination (experiment 2), the amount of interference remained approximately the same for base rates of 2-40 Hz, the range over which rate discrimination was measured. In both experiments, the amount of interference was reduced when the masker was modulated at a different rate than the probe.