Involuntary listening aids hearing

Journal/Book: Psychol Sci. 1997; 8: 40 West 20TH Street, New York, NY 10011-4211. Cambridge Univ Press. 112-118.

Abstract: In two experiments, I simultaneously measured response time, accuracy, and response bias in an auditory intensity discrimination task to look for evidence of stimulus-driven attention orienting in auditory frequency space. The results demonstrated that a cue tone caused an apparently involuntary orienting of attention to the cue's frequency region, allowing faster and more accurate processing of a subsequent target tone when it occurred at the same frequency as the cue than when it occurred ata different frequency. Relationships between response time, accuracy, and bias measures also allowed masking and other effects to be separated from attention-orienting effects in these experiments.

Note: Article Ward LM, Univ British Columbia, Dept Psychol, 2136 W Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, CANADA

Keyword(s): AUDITORY ATTENTION; VISUAL-ATTENTION; SIGNAL-DETECTION; MECHANISMS

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