Vibrotacile masking of Pacinian and non-Pacinian channels

Abstract

Vibrotactile masking functions were determined using sinusoidal and noise maskers. Results were nearly identical within the Pacinian (P) and non-Pacinian (NP) channels. At low maskers SLs there was a substantial amount of negative masking which proved not be an artifact of stimulus definition. The critical parameters for successful prediction of the data were a peripheral threshold and internal Gaussian noise. Threshold shifts in cross-channel stimulation can be attributed to the masker exceeding the detection threshold of the signal channel.