title: Context effects on auditory distraction.
abstract: The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that sound context modulates the magnitude of auditory distraction, indexed by behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Participants were asked to identify tone duration, while irrelevant changes occurred in tone frequency, tone intensity, and harmonic structure. Frequency deviants were randomly intermixed with standards (Uni-Condition), with intensity deviants (Bi-Condition), and with both intensity and complex deviants (Tri-Condition). Only in the Tri-Condition did the auditory distraction effect reflect the magnitude difference among the frequency and intensity deviants. The mixture of the different types of deviants in the Tri-Condition modulated the perceived level of distraction, demonstrating that the sound context can modulate the effect of deviance level on processing irrelevant acoustic changes in the environment. These findings thus indicate that perceptual contrast plays a role in change detection processes that leads to auditory distraction.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA; Center of Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University, USA. Electronic address: sufen.chen@einstein.yu.edu.
authors.forename: Sufen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Elyse S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Sussman
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention; Auditory distraction; Deviance level; Magnitude effect; Mismatch negativity (MMN); P3a