scholarly journals Training enhances the ability of listeners to exploit visual information for auditory scene analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huriye Atilgan ◽  
Jennifer K. Bizley
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Auditory Scene Analysis ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Target Sound ◽  
Auditory Selective Attention ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe ability to use temporal relationships between cross-modal cues facilitates perception and behavior. Previously we observed that temporally correlated changes in the size of a visual stimulus and the intensity in an auditory stimulus influenced the ability of listeners to perform an auditory selective attention task (Maddox et al., 2015). In this task participants detected timbral changes in a target sound while ignoring those in a simultaneously presented masker. When the visual stimulus was temporally coherent with the target sound, performance was significantly better than when it was temporally coherent with the masker sound, despite the visual stimulus conveying no task-relevant information. Here, we trained observers to detect audiovisual temporal coherence and asked whether this improved their ability to benefit from visual cues during the auditory selective attention task. We observed these listeners improved performance in the auditory selective attention task and changed the way in which they benefited from a visual stimulus: after training performance was better when the visual stimulus was temporally coherent with either the target or the masker stream, relative to the condition in which the visual stimulus was coherent with neither auditory stream. A second group which trained to discriminate modulation rate differences between temporally coherent audiovisual streams improved task performance, but did not change the way in which they used visual information. A control group did not change their performance between pretest and post-test. These results provide insights into how crossmodal experience may optimize multisensory integration.

Subject Recruitment Bias: The Paid Volunteer Subject

1978 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Rush ◽  
James S. Phillips ◽  
Paul E. Panek
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Stepwise Discriminant Analysis ◽  
Female Volunteer ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Auditory Selective Attention ◽  
Subject Recruitment ◽  
Volunteer Subject ◽  
Recruitment Bias ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Omission Errors

To assess the potential bias introduced by subject recruitment procedures, differences in perceptual style, personality, and performance on an auditory selective attention task were investigated for a sample of 47 female, volunteer research participants. Half of the subjects ( N = 24) had been recruited as unpaid volunteers while the others ( N = 23) received $2.50 per hour for their participation. Stepwise discriminant analysis indicated that unpaid volunteers tended to be significantly more interpersonal in orientation, were more field-dependent, and committed fewer omission errors on a selective attention task than subjects who had volunteered for pay. The findings were discussed in terms of the problems associated with generalizing from one sample to other samples and to the criterion population as a function of experimental boundary conditions.

scholarly journals Auditory selective attention under working memory load

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rena Bayramova ◽  
Enrico Toffalini ◽  
Mario Bonato ◽  
Massimo Grassi
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Working Memory Load ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Auditory Selective Attention ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Four Levels

Abstract Can cognitive load enhance concentration on task-relevant information and help filter out distractors? Most of the prior research in the area of selective attention has focused on visual attention or cross-modal distraction and has yielded controversial results. Here, we studied whether working memory load can facilitate selective attention when both target and distractor stimuli are auditory. We used a letter n-back task with four levels of working memory load and two levels of distraction: congruent and incongruent distractors. This combination of updating and inhibition tasks allowed us to manipulate working memory load within the selective attention task. Participants sat in front of three loudspeakers and were asked to attend to the letter presented from the central loudspeaker while ignoring that presented from the flanking ones (spoken by a different person), which could be the same letter as the central one (congruent) or a different (incongruent) letter. Their task was to respond whether or not the central letter matched the letter presented n (0, 1, 2, or 3) trials back. Distraction was measured in terms of the difference in reaction time and accuracy on trials with incongruent versus congruent flankers. We found reduced interference from incongruent flankers in 2- and 3-back conditions compared to 0- and 1-back conditions, whereby higher working memory load almost negated the effect of incongruent flankers. These results suggest that high load on verbal working memory can facilitate inhibition of distractors in the auditory domain rather than make it more difficult as sometimes claimed.

Auditory Selective Attention Hindered by Visual Stimulus in Prelingually Deaf Children With Cochlear Implants

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. e542-e547
Author(s):  
Yuebo Chen ◽  
Zhenzhu Yue ◽  
Maojin Liang ◽  
Jinqun Liu ◽  
Shao Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Auditory Selective Attention ◽  
Prelingually Deaf

scholarly journals Auditory selective attention is enhanced by a task-irrelevant temporally coherent visual stimulus in human listeners

eLife ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross K Maddox ◽  
Huriye Atilgan ◽  
Jennifer K Bizley ◽  
Adrian KC Lee
Keyword(s):  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Sound Source ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Auditory Selective Attention ◽  
Selective Listening ◽  
Temporal Cues ◽  
Temporal Relationships ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Task Irrelevant

In noisy settings, listening is aided by correlated dynamic visual cues gleaned from a talker's face—an improvement often attributed to visually reinforced linguistic information. In this study, we aimed to test the effect of audio–visual temporal coherence alone on selective listening, free of linguistic confounds. We presented listeners with competing auditory streams whose amplitude varied independently and a visual stimulus with varying radius, while manipulating the cross-modal temporal relationships. Performance improved when the auditory target's timecourse matched that of the visual stimulus. The fact that the coherence was between task-irrelevant stimulus features suggests that the observed improvement stemmed from the integration of auditory and visual streams into cross-modal objects, enabling listeners to better attend the target. These findings suggest that in everyday conditions, where listeners can often see the source of a sound, temporal cues provided by vision can help listeners to select one sound source from a mixture.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document