Behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention

The auditory attention skills of alterting, orienting, and executive control were assessed using behavioural and neuroimaging techniques. Initially, an auditory analgue of the visual attention network test (ANT) (FAN, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, & Posner, 2002) was created and tested alongside the...

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Main Author: Roberts, Katherine Leonie
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2005
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12223/
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author Roberts, Katherine Leonie
author_facet Roberts, Katherine Leonie
author_sort Roberts, Katherine Leonie
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description The auditory attention skills of alterting, orienting, and executive control were assessed using behavioural and neuroimaging techniques. Initially, an auditory analgue of the visual attention network test (ANT) (FAN, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, & Posner, 2002) was created and tested alongside the visual ANT in a group of 40 healthy subjects. The results from this study showed similarities between auditory and visual spatial orienting. An fMRI study was conducted to investigate whether the similar behavioural measures of auditory and visual executive control were the result of common cortical mechanisms. The results were consistent with a supramodal anterior network involved in conflict monitoring and resolution. Auditory orienting of attention was investigated through a series of behavioural experiments. The first investigated listeners' ability to benefit from cues to location, to pitch, and to both location and pitch, in a vowel-identification task. Subjects were able to benefit from all three types of cues but did not gain additive benefit from being cued to both location and pitch, suggesting that attention was being directed to an auditory object comprising both features. The following seven experiments investigated auditory spatial orienting in non-spatial tasks. These experiments revealed a robust exogenous (automatic) auditory orienting effect, which was relatively insensitive to task differences. However, endogenous (voluntary) auditory orienting effects were small and highly variable across subjects. It is hypothesised that differences between auditory and visual spatial orienting reflect the relative importance of spatial information in the two modalities, and differences in the neural coding of auditory and visual spatial information.
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spelling nottingham-122232025-02-28T11:18:11Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12223/ Behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention Roberts, Katherine Leonie The auditory attention skills of alterting, orienting, and executive control were assessed using behavioural and neuroimaging techniques. Initially, an auditory analgue of the visual attention network test (ANT) (FAN, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, & Posner, 2002) was created and tested alongside the visual ANT in a group of 40 healthy subjects. The results from this study showed similarities between auditory and visual spatial orienting. An fMRI study was conducted to investigate whether the similar behavioural measures of auditory and visual executive control were the result of common cortical mechanisms. The results were consistent with a supramodal anterior network involved in conflict monitoring and resolution. Auditory orienting of attention was investigated through a series of behavioural experiments. The first investigated listeners' ability to benefit from cues to location, to pitch, and to both location and pitch, in a vowel-identification task. Subjects were able to benefit from all three types of cues but did not gain additive benefit from being cued to both location and pitch, suggesting that attention was being directed to an auditory object comprising both features. The following seven experiments investigated auditory spatial orienting in non-spatial tasks. These experiments revealed a robust exogenous (automatic) auditory orienting effect, which was relatively insensitive to task differences. However, endogenous (voluntary) auditory orienting effects were small and highly variable across subjects. It is hypothesised that differences between auditory and visual spatial orienting reflect the relative importance of spatial information in the two modalities, and differences in the neural coding of auditory and visual spatial information. 2005 Thesis (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en arr https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12223/1/431186.pdf Roberts, Katherine Leonie (2005) Behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. auditory attention auditory perception cognitive psychology
spellingShingle auditory attention
auditory perception
cognitive psychology
Roberts, Katherine Leonie
Behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention
title Behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention
title_full Behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention
title_fullStr Behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention
title_full_unstemmed Behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention
title_short Behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention
title_sort behavioural and neural correlates of auditory attention
topic auditory attention
auditory perception
cognitive psychology
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12223/