Auditory-Spatial Executive Function across Spatial Frames of Reference

Abstract

An experiment utilizing an auditory-spatial Stroop paradigm was created to assess whether participants are better able to attend to spatial or semantic information across near and far regions of space. Participants were instructed to attend to either the semantic information of a stimulus or identify the location of where the stimulus came from, depending on the condition. The sounds came from speakers that were physically located in either near space (peripersonal region of space) or far space (extrapersonal region of space) and the words were either "near" or "far." Results indicate that participants in general were quicker at responding to the semantic condition than the location condition. Furthermore, consistent with findings of many other Stroop-like experiments, there was a significant difference between congruent and incongruent trials in both task conditions. The results of this investigation provide additional insight into how people process different types of information across near and far regions of space.