Focusing, Sustaining, and Switching Attention

Abstract

Experiments with human subjects explored how auditory attention operates. Specifically, the experiments investigated 1) the hypothesis that room reverberation interferes with selective attention, 2) whether selective attention to an ongoing target improves with time when the target has a contiguous feature distinguishing if from competing sources, and 3) how visual cues help direct selective auditory attention through behavioral measures and computational modeling. Results demonstrate that 1) selective attention is adversely affected by room reverberation, 2) continuity of task-irrelevant sound features strongly enhances the ability to maintain attention on a stream based on some other, orthogonal feature, and 3) visual cues can be used to direct selective auditory attention.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 12, 2013
Accession Number
ADA595125

Entities

People

  • Barbara Shinn-Cunningham

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acoustic Signals
  • Architectural Acoustics
  • Birds
  • Command And Control
  • Computational Modeling
  • Computational Neuroscience
  • Continuity
  • Department Of Defense
  • Military Research
  • Neurosciences
  • Otorhinolaryngology
  • Perception
  • Prostheses And Implants
  • Reverberation
  • Speech
  • Switching
  • Universities

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Acoustical Oceanography.
  • Computer Vision.
  • Vision Science/Vision Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience.