Effects of location, frequency region, and time course of selective attention on auditory scene analysis.
Often, the sound arriving at the ears is a mixture from many different sources, but only 1 is of interest. To assist with selection, the auditory system structures the incoming input into streams, each of which ideally corresponds to a single source. Some authors have argued that this process of streaming is automatic and invariant, but recent evidence suggests it is affected by attention. In Experiments 1 and 2, it is shown that the effect of attention is not a general suppression of streaming on an unattended side of the ascending auditory pathway or in unattended frequency regions. Experiments 3 and 4 investigate the effect on streaming of physical gaps in the sequence and of brief switches in attention away from a sequence. The results demonstrate that after even short gaps or brief switches in attention, streaming is reset. The implications are discussed, and a hierarchical decomposition model is proposed.
Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom. rhodri.cusack@mrccbu.cam.ac.uk
Rhodri
R
Cusack
John
J
Deeks
Genevieve
G
Aikman
Robert P
RP
Carlyon
D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D002755:Choice Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D010507:Periodicity; D013017:Sound Localization; D013997:Time Factors