Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms

Endogenous attention is typically studied by presenting instructive cues in advance of a target stimulus array. For endogenous visual attention, task performance improves as the duration of the cue-target interval increases up to 800 ms. Less is known about how endogenous auditory attention unfolds...

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Main Authors: Holmes, Emma, Kitterick, Pádraig T., Summerfield, A. Quentin
Format: Article
Published: Springer 2018
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49488/
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author Holmes, Emma
Kitterick, Pádraig T.
Summerfield, A. Quentin
author_facet Holmes, Emma
Kitterick, Pádraig T.
Summerfield, A. Quentin
author_sort Holmes, Emma
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Endogenous attention is typically studied by presenting instructive cues in advance of a target stimulus array. For endogenous visual attention, task performance improves as the duration of the cue-target interval increases up to 800 ms. Less is known about how endogenous auditory attention unfolds over time or the mechanisms by which an instructive cue presented in advance of an auditory array improves performance. The current experiment used five cue-target intervals (0, 250, 500, 1000, and 2000 ms) to compare four hypotheses for how preparatory attention develops over time in a multi-talker listening task. Young adults were cued to attend to a target talker who spoke in a mixture of three talkers. Visual cues indicated the target talker’s spatial location or their gender. Participants directed attention to location and gender simultaneously (‘objects’) at all cue-target intervals. Participants were consistently faster and more accurate at reporting words spoken by the target talker when the cue-target interval was 2000 ms than 0 ms. In addition, the latency of correct responses progressively shortened as the duration of the cue-target interval increased from 0 to 2000 ms. These findings suggest that the mechanisms involved in preparatory auditory attention develop gradually over time, taking at least 2000 ms to reach optimal configuration, yet providing cumulative improvements in speech intelligibility as the duration of the cue-target interval increases from 0 to 2000 ms. These results demonstrate an improvement in performance for cue-target intervals longer than those that have been reported previously in the visual or auditory modalities.
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spelling nottingham-494882020-05-04T19:48:06Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49488/ Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms Holmes, Emma Kitterick, Pádraig T. Summerfield, A. Quentin Endogenous attention is typically studied by presenting instructive cues in advance of a target stimulus array. For endogenous visual attention, task performance improves as the duration of the cue-target interval increases up to 800 ms. Less is known about how endogenous auditory attention unfolds over time or the mechanisms by which an instructive cue presented in advance of an auditory array improves performance. The current experiment used five cue-target intervals (0, 250, 500, 1000, and 2000 ms) to compare four hypotheses for how preparatory attention develops over time in a multi-talker listening task. Young adults were cued to attend to a target talker who spoke in a mixture of three talkers. Visual cues indicated the target talker’s spatial location or their gender. Participants directed attention to location and gender simultaneously (‘objects’) at all cue-target intervals. Participants were consistently faster and more accurate at reporting words spoken by the target talker when the cue-target interval was 2000 ms than 0 ms. In addition, the latency of correct responses progressively shortened as the duration of the cue-target interval increased from 0 to 2000 ms. These findings suggest that the mechanisms involved in preparatory auditory attention develop gradually over time, taking at least 2000 ms to reach optimal configuration, yet providing cumulative improvements in speech intelligibility as the duration of the cue-target interval increases from 0 to 2000 ms. These results demonstrate an improvement in performance for cue-target intervals longer than those that have been reported previously in the visual or auditory modalities. Springer 2018-08-01 Article PeerReviewed Holmes, Emma, Kitterick, Pádraig T. and Summerfield, A. Quentin (2018) Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 80 (6). pp. 1520-1538. ISSN 1943-393X https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13414-018-1531-x doi:10.3758/s13414-018-1531-x doi:10.3758/s13414-018-1531-x
spellingShingle Holmes, Emma
Kitterick, Pádraig T.
Summerfield, A. Quentin
Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms
title Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms
title_full Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms
title_fullStr Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms
title_full_unstemmed Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms
title_short Cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms
title_sort cueing listeners to attend to a target talker progressively improves word report as the duration of the cue-target interval lengthens to 2000 ms
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49488/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49488/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49488/