Temporal auditory processing deficits are thought
to play an important role in some pathologies of speech
understanding difficulties. The purposes of the present
study were to determine whether short silent gaps within
a pure tone can be used to elicit mismatch negativity (MMN)
as an objective measure of temporal resolution, and to
investigate the relation between MMN and performance on
a behavioral gap-detection task. The stimuli used for both
tasks were 1-kHz sinusoids presented in a low-pass masking
noise. Behavioral gap-detection thresholds were determined
using an adaptive three-alternative forced-choice procedure.
To elicit MMN, a series of deviant stimuli with varying
gap durations was generated and presented in an oddball
paradigm among standard stimuli without a gap. Only the
gaps larger than the mean behavioral gap-detection threshold
evoked a clear MMN. There was no clear relation between
psychoacoustic and MMN thresholds.