Petsas, T;
Harrison, J;
Kashino, M;
Furukawa, S;
Chait, M;
(2016)
The effect of distraction on change detection in crowded acoustic scenes.
Hearing Research
, 341
pp. 179-189.
10.1016/j.heares.2016.08.015.
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Abstract
In this series of behavioural experiments we investigated the effect of distraction on the maintenance of acoustic scene information in short-term memory. Stimuli are artificial acoustic ‘scenes’ composed of several (up to twelve) concurrent tone-pip streams (‘sources’). A gap (1000 ms) is inserted partway through the ‘scene’; Changes in the form of an appearance of a new source or disappearance of an existing source, occur after the gap in 50% of the trials. Listeners were instructed to monitor the unfolding ‘soundscapes’ for these events. Distraction was measured by presenting distractor stimuli during the gap. Experiments 1 and 2 used a dual task design where listeners were required to perform a task with varying attentional demands (‘High Demand’ vs. ‘Low Demand’) on brief auditory (Experiment 1a) or visual (Experiment 1b) signals presented during the gap. Experiments 2 and 3 required participants to ignore distractor sounds and focus on the change detection task. Our results demonstrate that the maintenance of scene information in short-term memory is influenced by the availability of attentional and/or processing resources during the gap, and that this dependence appears to be modality specific. We also show that these processes are susceptible to bottom up driven distraction even in situations when the distractors are not novel, but occur on each trial. Change detection performance is systematically linked with the, independently determined, perceptual salience of the distractor sound. The findings also demonstrate that the present task may be a useful objective means for determining relative perceptual salience.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The effect of distraction on change detection in crowded acoustic scenes |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.heares.2016.08.015 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2016.08.015 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology, Neurosciences, Otorhinolaryngology, Neurosciences & Neurology, VISUAL ATTENTIONAL LOAD, COMPLEX AUDITORY SCENES, SHORT-TERM-MEMORY, MISMATCH NEGATIVITY, SENSORY MODALITIES, INATTENTIONAL DEAFNESS, CELL PHONE, TONE PITCH, TASK, RESPONSES |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > The Ear Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1515245 |
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