Attentional Capacity Limits Gap Detection during Concurrent Sound Segregation

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (11) ◽  
pp. 2186-2196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ada W. S. Leung ◽  
Pierre Jolicoeur ◽  
Claude Alain
Keyword(s):  
Silent Interval ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Gap Detection ◽  
Attentional Processing ◽  
Complex Sounds ◽  
Passive Listening ◽  
Sound Segregation ◽  
Separate Object ◽  
Sound Objects ◽  
Sensory Encoding

Detecting a brief silent interval (i.e., a gap) is more difficult when listeners perceive two concurrent sounds rather than one in a sound containing a mistuned harmonic in otherwise in-tune harmonics. This impairment in gap detection may reflect the interaction of low-level encoding or the division of attention between two sound objects, both of which could interfere with signal detection. To distinguish between these two alternatives, we compared ERPs during active and passive listening with complex harmonic tones that could include a gap, a mistuned harmonic, both features, or neither. During active listening, participants indicated whether they heard a gap irrespective of mistuning. During passive listening, participants watched a subtitled muted movie of their choice while the same sounds were presented. Gap detection was impaired when the complex sounds included a mistuned harmonic that popped out as a separate object. The ERP analysis revealed an early gap-related activity that was little affected by mistuning during the active or passive listening condition. However, during active listening, there was a marked decrease in the late positive wave that was thought to index attention and response-related processes. These results suggest that the limitation in detecting the gap is related to attentional processing, possibly divided attention induced by the concurrent sound objects, rather than deficits in preattentional sensory encoding.

“Can You Repeat That?” Teaching Active Listening in Management Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra E. Spataro ◽  
Janel Bloch
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Management Education ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Listening Skills ◽  
Learning Materials ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Learning Plan ◽  
Passive Listening

Listening is a critical communication skill and therefore an essential element of management education. Active listening surpasses passive listening or simple hearing to establish a deeper connection between speaker and listener, as the listener gives the speaker full attention via inquiry, reflection, respect, and empathy. This article offers a method and tools for teaching active listening that can be implemented in online, hybrid, or face-to-face platforms. We begin by reviewing the great demand for listening skills, in light of how little time is spent on listening instruction compared with that on speaking instruction. We then present a set of learning materials and a procedure for using them that includes both pre- and posttests, multimedia learning materials, and exercises that enhance skill development. We follow the learning plan with analyses of both quantitative and qualitative data, showing support for the suggested method. These results fit with our personal experience of consistent success with the method across student levels (graduate and undergraduate) and platforms (online and face-to-face). Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the presentation and some implications for teaching listening in management education.

Effects of Attention State on Electrodermal Activity during Auditory Stimulation of Children

1992 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masamitsu Shibagaki ◽  
Tadashige Yamanaka ◽  
Takeshi Furuya
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Negative Correlation ◽  
Electrodermal Activity ◽  
Significant Negative Correlation ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Passive Listening ◽  
Task Instructions ◽  
Temporal Variables ◽  
Baseline Recording ◽  
Listening Task

During passive and active listening tasks electrodermal activity of 49 healthy school children was studied. The procedure included baseline recording, a passive listening task, instructions, and simple and discriminative active-listening tasks. On the passive task from Trials 1 to 10, habituation of the amplitude of the skin conductance response (SCR) occurred. Habituation of SCR amplitude did not occur during the active tasks. The children seemed to pay more attention during the active tasks than during the passive task, since the need to press the key is apt to require and may even increase general attention. As for temporal variables of SCR, the frequency of spontaneous SCRs showed a significant negative correlation with SCR latency and rise time. Reaction time exhibited a significant negative correlation with age. An increase in reaction time was found during the discriminative active-listening task over that for the simple active-listening task during the course of 10 trials. The younger children (6–8 yr.) seemed to require longer to pay attention than the older ones (10–12 yr.). Children seemed to pay more attention during the discriminative than during the simple active-listening task, since the need to press the key for discrimination should require and is likely to increase general attention.

scholarly journals Background Noise Improves Gap Detection in Tonically Inhibited Inferior Colliculus Neurons

2002 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 240-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willard W. Wilson ◽  
Joseph P. Walton
Keyword(s):  
Inferior Colliculus ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Feature Detection ◽  
Inbred Mouse ◽  
Inbred Mouse Strain ◽  
Neural Mechanism ◽  
Silent Interval ◽  
Inhibitory Input ◽  
Gap Detection ◽  
Order Of Magnitude

Single units in the inferior colliculus (IC) in the C57Bl/6 inbred mouse strain were tested for their temporal processing ability as measured by their minimum gap threshold (MGT), the shortest silent interval in an ongoing white-noise stimulus which a unit could encode. After ascertaining the MGT in quiet, units were re-tested in various levels of background noise. The focus of this report is on two types of tonically responding units found in the IC. Tonically inhibited (TI) units encoded gaps poorly in quiet and low levels of background noise as compared with tonically excited (TE) units. In quiet, the MGTs of TI units were about an order of magnitude longer than the MGTs typical of TE units. Paradoxically, gap encoding was improved in high levels of background noise for TI units. This result is unexpected from the traditional viewpoint that noise necessarily degrades signal processing and is inconsistent with psychophysical observations of diminished speech and gap detection processing in noisy environments. We believe the improved feature detection described here is produced by the adaptation of inhibitory input. Continuous background noise would diminish the inhibitory efficacy of the gap stimulus by increasing the latency to the onset of inhibition and decreasing its duration. This would allow more spontaneous activity to “bleed through” the silent gap, thus signaling its presence. Improved feature detection in background noise resulting from inhibitory adaptation would seem an efficient neural mechanism and one that might be generally useful in other signal detection tasks.

The psychophysics of concurrent sound segregation

1992 ◽  
Vol 336 (1278) ◽  
pp. 347-355 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Frequency Modulation ◽  
Complex Sound ◽  
Complex Sounds ◽  
Sound Segregation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Frequency Components ◽  
Combine Information ◽  
Frequency Processing

To perceptually separate concurrent complex sounds, normally hearing listeners simultaneously combine information across a wide range of frequency components. Three psychoacoustical experiments are described which investigate different forms of this across-frequency processing. The first two experiments investigate the role of coherence of frequency modulation (FM) between widely separated frequency components of a complex sound.

Age Differences in Characteristics of the Attention Process of Electrodermal Activity during Auditory Stimulation

1994 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 403-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masamitsu Shibagaki ◽  
Masahiro Sakamoto ◽  
Takeshi Furuya
Keyword(s):  
Age Differences ◽  
Electrodermal Activity ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Primary School Children ◽  
Task Instruction ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Passive Listening ◽  
Baseline Recording ◽  
Attention Process ◽  
Listening Task

Age differences in characteristics of the attention process of electrodermal activity during passive and active Listening tasks were studied with 43 nursery and 49 primary school children and 38 university students. The procedure included baseline recording, a passive listening task, instruction, and an active listening task. Significant differences in skin conductance response (SCR) were found among the three age groups. The SCR became smaller for the groups of increasing ages only for the active listening task. As the trials progressed, there was a trend in the three age groups for decreasing SCR amplitude during the passive listening task.

Attention State in Electrodermal Activity during Auditory Stimulation of Children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

1993 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 331-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masamitsu Shibagaki ◽  
Tadashige Yamanaka ◽  
Takeshi Furuya
Keyword(s):  
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ◽  
Attention Deficit ◽  
Electrodermal Activity ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Hyperactivity Disorder ◽  
Passive Listening ◽  
Task Instructions ◽  
Baseline Recording ◽  
Adhd Children ◽  
Listening Task

Electrodermal activity during passive and active listening tasks of 18 children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and 49 healthy school children was studied. The procedure included baseline recording, a passive listening task, instructions, and both simple and discriminative active-listening tasks. ADHD subjects tended to exhibit lower arousal as indicated by the decrease in amplitude of the skin conductance response. Present findings confirm classical observation that ADHD children have shorter attention spans.

The perception of concurrent sound objects in harmonic complexes impairs gap detection.

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 727-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ada W. S. Leung ◽  
Pierre Jolicoeur ◽  
François Vachon ◽  
Claude Alain
Keyword(s):  
Gap Detection ◽  
Sound Objects

Concurrent Sound Segregation Is Enhanced in Musicians

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 1488-1498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Rich Zendel ◽  
Claude Alain
Keyword(s):  
Second Harmonic ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Harmonic Series ◽  
Complex Scene ◽  
Complex Sounds ◽  
Musical Expertise ◽  
Sound Segregation ◽  
Perceptual Abilities ◽  
The Impact

The ability to segregate simultaneously occurring sounds is fundamental to auditory perception. Many studies have shown that musicians have enhanced auditory perceptual abilities; however, the impact of musical expertise on segregating concurrently occurring sounds is unknown. Therefore, we examined whether long-term musical training can improve listeners' ability to segregate sounds that occur simultaneously. Participants were presented with complex sounds that had either all harmonics in tune or the second harmonic mistuned by 1%, 2%, 4%, 8%, or 16% of its original value. The likelihood of hearing two sounds simultaneously increased with mistuning, and this effect was greater in musicians than nonmusicians. The segregation of the mistuned harmonic from the harmonic series was paralleled by an object-related negativity that was larger and peaked earlier in musicians. It also coincided with a late positive wave referred to as the P400 whose amplitude was larger in musicians than in nonmusicians. The behavioral and electrophysiological effects of musical expertise were specific to processing the mistuned harmonic as the N1, the N1c, and the P2 waves elicited by the tuned stimuli were comparable in both musicians and nonmusicians. These results demonstrate that listeners' ability to segregate concurrent sounds based on harmonicity is modulated by experience and provides a basis for further studies assessing the potential rehabilitative effects of musical training on solving complex scene analysis problems illustrated by the cocktail party example.

scholarly journals Mapping the contents of consciousness during musical imagery

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mor Regev ◽  
Andrea R. Halpern ◽  
Adrian M. Owen ◽  
Aniruddh D Patel ◽  
Robert J Zatorre
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Auditory Information ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Dynamic Activity ◽  
Complex Sounds ◽  
Musical Imagery ◽  
Passive Listening ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Auditory Cortices

AbstractHumans can internally represent auditory information without an external stimulus. When imagining music, how similar are unfolding neural representations to those during the original perceived experience? Participants memorized six one-minute-long musical pieces with high accuracy. Functional MRI data were collected during: 1) silent imagery of melodies to the beat of a visual metronome; 2) same but while tapping to the beat; and 3) passive listening. During imagery, inter-subject comparison showed that melody-specific temporal response patterns were reinstated in right associative auditory cortices. When tapping accompanied imagery, the melody-specific neural patterns were extended to associative cortices bilaterally. These results indicate that the specific contents of conscious experience are encoded similarly during imagery and perception in the dynamic activity of auditory cortices. Furthermore, rhythmic motion can enhance the reinstatement of neural patterns associated with the experience of complex sounds, in keeping with models of motor to sensory influences in auditory processing.

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