ch11 auditory attention

cocktail party problem

you have to attend to one conversation and ignore others, like at a party or bar

dichotic listening task

determining which ear is dominant by playing two simultaneous sounds in either ear, by seeing which words are detected it can be associated with which ear it was played to and therefore which ear is dominant, can also tell Ps to listen to only one ear, right ear/left cortex usually more dominant in people

shadowing task

repeat back message of the attended ear to make sure they are paying attention to only that ear

when does info selection occur?

determining what was head from the ignored ear tells us if info selection happened early or late, ie. early info selection would mean identifying sex of voice or loudness of voice from ignored ear, ie. late info selection would be identifying words from ignored ear

cherry (1953)

shadowing task Ps report from ignored ear, also found that when asked what you picked up on from ignored ear and the P can describe a lot including the content of the message, then the filter was applied late in processing stream- supports early selection model

moray (1959)

a word repeated 35 times in the P’s ignored ear and the P didn’t even realize it- people are pretty good at shutting down processing in ear they are told to ignore and good at focusing on attentional ear; also did shadowing task and people recognized their own name said into the ignored ear which supports the idea of a selective filter- supports early selection model

threshold for identification

two ideas: maybe the mental representation threshold for your name is lower than other concepts (takes less activation to stimulate auditory ID), or also that the resting level for activating your name is already high so it doesn’t take much to reach the threshold

treisman’s attenuation model (1960)

used shadowing task but elimated physical difference b/w messages by using same speaker for both, at some point the content of the messages switched, found that Ps switched ears as the content switched even though they were asked to focus on one ear, suggests that when they have to people select late and there is some level of rapid meaning processing that occurs w/o attention- supports late selection model

early vs. late selection – how does this relate to selection of physical features vs. content features?

filters information based on physical features (e.g., voice, pitch, or location) before meaning is processed. Late selection processes the content/meaning of all stimuli before selecting which information reaches conscious awareness or guides a response.